Synergistic plant-microbes interactions in the rhizosphere: a potential headway for the remediation of hydrocarbon polluted soils

Abstract

Soil pollution is an unavoidable evil; many crude-oil exploring communities have been identified to be the most ecologically impacted regions around the world due to hydrocarbon pollution and their concurrent health risks. Several clean-up technologies have been reported on the removal of hydrocarbons in polluted soils but most of them are either very expensive, require the integration of advanced mechanization and/or cannot be implemented in small scale. However, “Bioremediation” has been reported as an efficient, cost-effective and environment-friendly technology for clean-up of hydrocarbon”s contaminated soils. Here, we suggest the implementation of synergistic mechanism of bioremediation such as the use of rhizosphere mechanism which involves the actions of plant and microorganisms, which involves the exploitation of plant and microorganisms for effective and speedy remediation of hydrocarbon”s contaminated soils. In this mechanism, plant”s action is synergized with the soil microorganisms through the root rhizosphere to promote soil remediation. The microorganisms benefit from the root metabolites (exudates) and the plant in turn benefits from the microbial recycling/solubilizing of mineral nutrients. Harnessing the abilities of plants and microorganisms is a potential headway for cost-effective clean-up of hydrocarbon”s polluted sites; such technology could be very important in countries with great oil producing activities/records over many years but still developing.

Keywords:

• Hydrocarbon pollution
• health risks
• synergistic mechanism

Additional information

Funding

This review article is presented in connection with work done under Award of 2015 CIIT-TWAS Sandwich Postgraduate Fellowship FR number: 3240287156. We, therefore, appreciate The World Academy of Science (TWAS) for the advancement of science in developing countries, Strada Costriera 11, 34151 Trieste, Italy, and the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), Pakistan for their technical and financial support.