Enhancing Phytoremediation Efficiency in Response to Environmetal Pollution Stress: In Plants and Environment

Environmental pollution, particularly contamination of soil and water resources, has been
accelerated as a result of global industrialization and so is considered as a major risk for
human communities throughout the world. Due to the adverse effects of organic and
inorganic pollutants on human health and environmental safety, it is necessary to be removed
in order to minimize the entry of these potentially toxics into the food chain. There are several
methods to remove the soil pollutants which are categorized into 3 main parts including
chemical, physical and biological methods. While conventional methods of soil clean-up
including solidification, vitrification, electrokinetic, excavation, soil washing and flushing,
oxidation and reduction etc. have shown to be effective in small areas, they need special
equipments and are labor intensive. However, due to the side effects and highly costs of
physical and chemical techniques, the biological methods especially phytoremediation, seem
to be promising remedial strategies and so are highlighted as alternative techniques to
traditional methodologies. Although phytoremediation as a “green technology” has shown
many encouraging results, there have also been numerous inconclusive and unsuccessful
attempts, especially in the field conditions, mostly because of biotic and abiotic stresses.
“Abiotic stress is defined as the negative impact of non-living factors on the living organisms
in a specific environment” (http://en.wikipedia.org). Abiotic stressors as the plant stress
factors including high concentration of organic and inorganic pollutants, salinity, drought,
flooding etc. could be considered as the main general themes adversely affect
phytoremediation efficiency. Therefore, decrease of abiotic stresses is considered as a
promising approach to introduce phytoremediation technique more applicable even though in
the present of environmental stressors which significantly affect plant growth and
development (Dimkpa et al., 2009; Gerhardt et al., 2009; Weyens et al., 2009).
In this chapter we have discussed phytoremediation and its various types, as well as the
plant response to abiotic stresses and the mechanisms which could be efficient to enhance
phytoremediation efficiency regarding to abiotic stresses, especially considering
environmental pollutants.