Phytoremediation of heavy metal contaminated soils: Challenges and future prospects

Rapid industrial development, current farming practices, and other anthropogenic activities have contributed to enhance the levels of poisonous heavy metals (HMs) in soils, which exert deleterious impacts on all the forms of living beings. HMs are among the most significant contaminants in the environment. A variety of techniques can be utilized for clean-up of these contaminants from the environment. However, the cost-intensiveness and involvement of several tedious steps/protocols are hindrances for optimum HM decontamination. Previously published studies have demonstrated the efficacy and economic benefits of certain plants for enhanced decontamination of HMs in the contaminated soils i.e. phytoremediation. This technology is environment friendly and potentially viable. However, the information on strategies to enhance phytoremediation are limited in literature. This paper aims to discuss HMs sources, phytoremediation techniques and advances in phytoremediation of HM sources including nano phytoremediation. HM uptake mechanisms, challenges and future research prospects in the field of phytoremediation have also been discussed.