ABSTRACT
Soil degradation and water pollution due to intensive agriculture and industrialization are global issues and major threats to sustainable crop production. Numerous technical innovations have been used to clean up soil or increase the productivity of degraded soils and contaminated waterbodies, but since they are expensive, impractical in real-world settings, or labor-intensive to a greater extent, they fail to do so, leaving the problem unresolved. Recently, the nanotechnological approaches ensure enhanced crop yield as well as improvement in soil and water quality parameters without disturbing the environment. Various approaches of nanotechnology, such as combining nanoparticles with soil amendment, enhancing the growth of hyperaccumulators, increasing soil microbial functionalities to degrade or change the state of soil pollutants, improving plant root system in soil, and helping to uptake by plant unavailable nutrients could restore degraded or polluted soil. The present chapter envisaged the current status of nanotechnology acceptance in decontaminating polluted soils and water and explored future perspectives.
