Phytoremediation of Metal- and Salt-Affected Soils

Modern industrialization, rapid urbanization, and excessive fertilization generate huge amounts of hazardous heavy metals and harmful salts leading to various degrees of soil contamination. The metal contamination, salinity, and sodicity are the prime examples of soil pollution that contribute as potential threat to soil health. The existing conventional technologies to remediate contaminated soil based on physicochemical approaches are highly cost intensive and could upset the biological component consequently productive function of soil in a long run. The magnitude of soil contamination can be minimized through the use of viable technology by means of using suitable plant species; the approach is called phytoremediation. In the recent past, phytoremediation received great attention because of its eco-friendly and economic approaches. Several hyperaccumulator and halophyte plants are known to decontaminate the soil polluted with various hazardous metals and salts. Several heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, copper, manganese, etc. have been commonly chosen as representative metals for which their concentrations in the environment may be used as reliable indices of environmental pollution. Salinity and sodicity are described as major causes of land degradation process that retards plant growth and productivity particularly in the arid and semiarid regions. By virtue of various interactions in the process of phytoremediation and salt removal, the plants can reduce soil contamination to a great extent and re-established the productive potential of the soil. Still, there is demand of research on co-contamination of inorganic and organic contaminants and various salts by means of phytoremediation strategies or plant-rhizosphere microbe interaction.