Enhanced Remediation of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Soil Through Fungal Delignification Strategy and Organic Waste Amendment: A Review

Nutrient-limited soils from growing global contamination with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and the massive organic waste generation from agro-based and food industries have raised more demand for exploring and recycling the latter as sustainable, cost-effective, and green nutrient-rich sources for soil amendment. To further enhanced the potentials of these substrates in soil, immobilisation or biological pre-treatment techniques using fungi are employed. The white-rot fungi- basidiomycetes, are the most widely researched and efficient organisms to perform these functions because of their high lignin-degrading ability for organic materials, such as corn cob, straws, spent brewery grains, sugarcane bagasse, etc. This review addresses the importance of organic amendment to enhance the biodegradation efficiency of PAH from contaminated soils and it also highlights various biological techniques for improving PAH biodegradation using organic waste materials and white-rot basidiomycetes. This review will also show a better understanding of the concepts of fungal immobilisation and pre-treatment for PAH degradation in soil and show their insights as feasible and optimise techniques for developing remedial strategies for contaminated soils.