Fungal Communities for Bioremediation of Contaminated Soil for Sustainable Environments

The fast-growing population of humans has drastically increased the demands for their needs, which has increased the environmental pressure by increasing the contaminants. Contaminants like heavy metals like Cr, Pb, Mn and As, complex compounds like xenobiotics, pesticides and polyaromatic hydrocarbons are the destructive materials of the earth that have ruined the soil and its fertility. Such contaminants have also adversely affected the ecosystem functioning, animal health as well as humans. A number of research and developments are focused on the remediation of contaminated sites using various physical, chemical and biological agents. The removal of contaminants by means of biological agents like microbes, especially fungi, has attracted the most attention due to their eco-friendly nature of the process and the fact that it does not pose any long-term side effect to the treated environment. The bioremediation of soil contaminants by means of fungi has been discussed in this chapter.