Role of Phytoremediation in Enhancing Heavy Metals Tolerance: A Novel Biotechnological Approach

Abstract

Rapid global modernization, urbanization, industrialization, and frequent natural processes release toxic heavy metals into the environment such as mercury (Hg), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), arsenic (As) and selenium (Se). In the present scenario, soil and water ecosystems are the main environmental alarms. The remediation of contaminated soils and water ecosystems with appropriate approaches is urgently needed. Physical remediation strategies are conventional, expensive, and nonspecific. Phytoremediation is an eco-friendly and fast-growing approach that are accomplished because of uptake of large quantities of toxic heavy metals from the environment. Since, plants are slow-growing and have low biomass that urgently needs to be bioengineered for high biomass. On the other hand, biotechnology helps to identify and isolate the specific gene coding for heavy metal resistance tolerance in plants. Moreover, molecular cloning and the manifestation of heavy metal accumulator genes and degrading enzyme coding genes displayed enhanced remediation rates, which will make the process for large-scale application to remediate faster contamination soils and water. This review has prominence on biotechnological methods and strategies for remediation of heavy metals and metalloid containment from environments. Furthermore, it focuses on the improvements and implications of phytoremediation as well as their operations and applications to clean up toxic pollutants from environments and to improve phytoremediation efficiency to tolerate different heavy metal pollutants highlights future challenges.