Phytoremediation (eBook)

The accumulation of large amounts of contaminants occurs in the environment due to industrialization and various other anthropogenic activities. Contaminants ultimately affect human health worldwide. Organic, inorganic, and radioactive substances are the prevalent forms of environmental contaminants and their complete remediation in soils and sediments is rather a difficult task. Concerns of their toxicities led to the emphasis on development of effective techniques to assess the presence and mobility of contaminants in air, water, and soil. Furthermore, the ever-increasing concentration of toxic pollutants in the environment is considered a serious threat to plant, animal, human, and environmental health.

Many technologies are in use to clean and eliminate hazardous contaminants from the environment; however, these technologies can be costly, labor intensive, and often distressing to the general public. Phytoremediation is a simple, cost effective, environmentally friendly and fast-emerging new technology for eliminating toxic contaminants from different environments. Phytoremediation refers to the natural ability of certain plants and their associated microbiome (including hyper-accumulators or bio-accumulators) to remove, degrade, or render contaminants harmless. Through this technique, certain species of plants flourish by accumulating contaminants present in the environment. The unique and selective uptake capabilities of plant root and shoot systems, effective translocation, bioaccumulation, and contaminant degradation capabilities of the accumulator plants are utilized in phytoremediation techniques. Phytotechnologies involving the use of plants for contaminant removal gained importance during the last two decades and phytoremediation technology became an effective tool for environmental detoxification because of plants ability to accumulate the contaminants at very high concentrations.

Phytoremediation strategies can remove, degrade, or stabilize inorganic and organic contaminants entering a multitude of ecosystems using green plants and their associated microbial communities. The development and use of phytotechnologies continues to move forward at a steady pace. Researchers recognize the potential of phytoremediation to offer a green, cost effective, eco-friendly and feasible application to address some of the world's many environmental challenges. This book provides significant information to add to the previous volumes published on the topic and can serve as the foundation for the development of new applications that feature the integration of modern research discoveries into new methods to remediate contaminated ecosystems. Moreover, this volume brings recent and established knowledge on different aspects of phytoremediation and nano-phytoremediation, providing this information in a single source that offers a cutting-edge synthesis of scientific and experiential knowledge on polluted environments that is useful for policy makers, practitioners and scientists, and engineers.

Phytoremediation: Management of Environmental Contaminants, Volume 7 highlights the various prospects that are involved in current global phytoremediation research. This book delivers a content-rich source to the reader and can act as a platform for further research studies. It should meet the needs of all researchers working in, or have an interest in this particular field.

Dr. Abid A. Ansari is assistant professor in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Dr. Ansari's research work is concerned with phytoremediation and eutrophication. Dr. Ansari has to his credit a number of research articles of national and international repute, eleven edited books, and a number of book chapters on varied aspects of his field of research. He has been awarded Scientist of the Year and Environmentalist of the Year by the National Environmental Science Academy, India, and Research Excellence by the University of Tabuk.

Dr. Sarvajeet Singh Gill is currently working as Professor (Asstt.) at Centre for Biotechnology, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana, India. Dr. Sarvajeet Gill's research includes abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants, reactive oxygen species signaling and antioxidant machinery, gene expression, helicases, crop improvement, transgenics, nitrogen & sulfur metabolism and plant fungal symbiotic interactions. Together with Dr. Narendra Tuteja at ICGEB, New Delhi, he worked on plant helicases for abiotic stress tolerance. His research uncovered new pathways to plant abiotic stress tolerance and indicates the potential for improving crop production at sub-optimal conditions. Sarvajeet Gill has edited several books with Springer, Wiley, Elsevier, CABI etc and has a number of research papers, review articles, and book chapters to his name. Recently, Dr. Sarvajeet Gill conferred with INDIA Research Excellence & Citation Award - 2017 from Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science).

Dr. M. Naeem is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Botany at Aligarh Muslim University, India. His research focuses on escalating the production of commercially important medicinal and aromatic plants and their active principles using a novel and safe technique involving depolymerized polysaccharides as well as the application of potent PGRs. His research also focuses on abiotic stress tolerance in medicinal plants. He has published around 100 research papers in reputable International journals. Also, he has authored ten books and co-authored several book chapters published by international publishers. Based on his research contributions, he has received multiple awards and recognitions.

Dr. Ritu Gill is currently working as Professor (Asstt.) at Centre for Biotechnology, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana, India. Dr. Gill is working on phytoremediation, plant abiotic stress and molecular aspects of host-parasite relations. She has published a number of refereed journal articles, book chapters, and books. She has been awarded with various research fellowships along with the Young Scientist Award by the Indian Society for Parasitology.