ABSTRACT
Pollution of soil and water due to various industrial activities is one of the most significant environmental problems throughout the world, which causes significant toxic effects on human, animals, microorganisms, and plants. Phytoremediation is an emerging low-cost, ecofriendly, green technology that utilizes plants to degrade, stabilized or remove organic and inorganic pollutants from soil, water, or sediment. It is admired because of its solar-driven nature, aesthetic advantages, and long-standing applicability as it can be directly employed at polluted sites, compared to other expensive methods of treatment. Exclusively derived processes by plants alone are time-consuming, have limited uptake, and have slow degradability evapotranspiration of volatile compounds. Further, high levels of pollutants pose toxic effects on remediate plants. This situation could be ameliorated and accelerated by exploring the plant–bacteria partnership, which would improve plant growth in polluted environment and ultimately improve phytoremediation efficiency. This chapter provides a view of the recent progress made toward the role of rhizospheric and endophytic bacteria in accelerating the phytoremediation capabilities of organic and inorganic pollutants and their potential use in environmental cleanup.
