Mycorrhiza Based Approaches for Soil Remediation and Abiotic Stress Management

Abstract

Anthropogenic activities have resulted into degradation of land and water bodies. Excessive mining activities lead to the contamination of nearby areas with heavy metals viz. Pb, As, Cd, Zn etc. All these elements are highly toxic to the plants when they are exposed at a higher concentration. Apart from these heavy metals even the excessive use of fertilizers, herbicides and unmetabolized antibiotics from livestock farming can also leaves considerable amount of toxic residues in the soil which hinder the overall growth of plants. In addition to this, abiotic stresses viz. drought stress, salt stress, osmotic stress and ozone stress etc. also limits the crop production. The level of their impact on the different crops across the globe varies depending upon the geographical location and unscrupulous human activities but altogether it results into a huge annual loss to the global crop productivity. Several approaches have been designed to figure out the stress right from artificial to biological. The biological approach includes the use of living organism for stress alleviation among which Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) emerged as a potent tool for stress alleviation and phytoremediation. The term “phytoremediation” has got more and more attention over the past decade. Due to the multifaceted applications of AMF, it has been widely used as a xenobiotic tool. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019.