Mechanistic understanding and holistic approach of phytoremediation: A review on application and future prospects

Rapid industrialisation, increased rate of waste production, higher agricultural inputs, mining, industrial waste, and contaminated irrigation water are increasing the heavy metal contamination in agricultural land and freshwater sources. These heavy metals contaminated resources are used by humans for food production that ultimately get accumulated in the food chain. Biomagnification of heavy metals can pose solemn health threats to human life, such as mutations, endocrine disruption, nephro-toxicity, etc. There has long been a need for decontamination of these resources and prevention from the further contamination to avert the negative effects on human health. The “phytoremediation” process is a very promising and eco-friendly approach for heavy metal remediation from contaminated sites with some limitations. An effort has been made to present the scattered information of phytoremediation technique in a single paper through this review. The present review describes the fundamentals of phytoremediation including the different associated processes, mechanism, and influencing factors. The mechanism of tolerance and detoxification of heavy metals by plants has also been discussed in brief. The possible amelioration/modification of a particular phytoremediation strategy has been advocated to increase its potential efficacy and further development of these strategies for future reference. The review tries to cover all the essential and adequate information of the relevant published data with some recent advances in phytoremediation approaches. It is recommended to apply the combination of different available techniques or phytoremediation techniques with modern chemical, biological and genetic engineering tools for an easy and effective decontamination of heavy metals from soil and agricultural land. The review advocates the development of site specific, farmer driven, sequential and phytoremediation strategies along with policy support for effective decontamination.