Phytoremediation: An ecofriendly tool for In-Situ remediation of contaminated soil

Abstract

In the race of development, various indiscriminate anthropogenic activities result in the accumulation of heavy metals in the soil and get entered into our food chain. Heavy metals are well known for their toxicity and becomes major threat for human because of their deleterious health effects especially in children. Because of the persistency of heavy metals, researchers are getting interest in low cost, and environment friendly plant based remediation technology known as phytoremediation. In Phytoremediation, plants and associated soil microbes are used to eliminate the toxicant contaminants from the soil and is a successful substitute to engineering methods. Phytoremediation of metal contamination involved phytoextraction, phytostabilization, phytovolatilization and rhizofiltration etc. The drawback of this method is that it is observed more successful and fast in lesser contaminated areas in comparison to high contamination. The metal hyper-accumulators and some wild plants are found able to remove contaminants 10–500 times higher compared to cultivated ones.