The rise in the environmental pollution in the past few decades due to rapid industrialization and unsafe agricultural practices has become one of the major challenges. The presence of the toxic pollutants such as nuclear wastes, heavy metals, pesticides and hydrocarbons have been languishing the environment as well as the human health. Bioremediation using microbes is emerging as an eco-friendly and cost effective approach to ameliorate the adverse effects of toxic pollutants. Microbes possess astonishing metabolic capabilities to alter all forms of organic material and can survive in extreme environmental conditions which make them attractive candidate for the bioremediation. Microbes are the treasure houses for environmental cleaning and recovering of contaminated soil and they have been reported from the diverse environmental conditions weather hot, cold, drought, or saline. Different groups of bioremediating microbes have reported from diverse conditions i.e. bacteria, fungi including yeast, and algae. Microbes belonging to genera Alcaligenes, Arthrobacter, Aspergilus, Azotobacter, Bacillus, Corynebacterium, Flavobacterium, Ganoderma, Methanogens, Methosinus, Mycobacterium, Nocardia, Phormidium, Pleurotus, Pseudomonas, Rhizopus, Rhodococcus and Stereum have been reported as potential bioremediators for the degradation of different pollutants of the environment such as xenobiotics, heavy metals, hydrocarbons and paper and pulp effluent. The present review focuses on microbial diversity in bioremediation, techniques applied in bioremediation, bioremediation of different environmental pollutants, and how bioremediation processes could be monitored.
Key words: Bioremediation, Microbes, Monitoring, Techniques, Biotechnological applications, Sustainability
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