Arbuscular mycorrhizal remediation of heavy metals contaminated soils

The heavy metal contamination of soils has been dramatically increasing in the past few decades around the globe. In addition to the natural influx, anthropogenic activities have further superspeeded the release of heavy metals. Growing population, urbanization, subsequent industrialization, and agricultural intensification are significantly disrupting the dynamic equilibrium of metallic flow. Therefore, the overaccumulation of hazardous heavy metals in soils beyond permissible ranges causes detrimental effects on the abiotic ecosystem as well as toxicity in living organisms including microbes, plants, animals, and humans. Finding a way from soil to plants, heavy metals enter the food chain thus, causing serious health implications in humans. Nonetheless, since the awareness of heavy metal contamination, several physical, chemical, and biological methods have been explored to remediate heavy metal contamination of soils. However, most of those techniques were found ineffective, costly, impractical at large scale, and/or require complex structures. Thus, bioremediation—the use of living organisms to remove environmental pollutants has gained significant attention. Mycorrhizoremediation is one of the advanced techniques developed aiming at bio-safety, effectiveness, and operational cost of remediation. This chapter is devoted to exploring the use and potential of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) as a tool in the bioremediation of heavy metal contaminations from soils with a special focus on AMF-assisted phytoremediation.