Exploiting microorganisms for the removal of organic pollutants: An environmental perspective

Large amount of xenobiotic compounds produced as a result of the industrialization of modern societies, intensive agricultural practices as well as other anthropogenic activities have been responsible for serious environmental pollution in various ecosystems. Over the last two decades, increased ecological awareness about the seriousness of organic pollutans has lead to strengthened legislative measures for environmental protection and a reduction in the number of polluted sites. Despite this, a substantial number of hot spots still exist globally that require remediation. Generally, conventional physical and chemical clean-up technologies are frequently expensive, environmental unfriendly and invasive, laborious, and often only result in an incomplete removal of the pollutants of concern. Thus, research over the last decade has focused on offering remediation schemes, mainly based on biological methods, which can be divided into bioremediation and phytoremediation. Whilst the convergent action of plants and their related microorganisms to remove and degrade xenobiotics such as petroleum compounds and nicotin is considered to be advantageous in terms of cost, due to low capital expenditure, and flexibility for in situ implementation, there are still numerous aspects about the mechanisms involved that remain the subject of research and debate among members of the scientific community. Therefore, this chapter tries to provide one more piece of information in this complicated puzzle of plant-microbe partnerships with emphasis on the remediation of hydrocarbon contaminated sites mediated by plant-bacteria associations.

Keywords:

biodegradation , bioremediation , environment , organic pollutants