Dear Colleagues,

Anthropogenic activities such as industrialisation, urbanisation, transportation, solid waste generation, and excess wastewater generation are affecting the natural equilibrium of our environment. This ever-increasing human activity results in the contamination of soils and water sources with heavy metals, organic pollutants, and other contaminants. Not only do these chemicals adversely affect the contaminated sites, but by accumulating in agricultural soils, they enter the food chain and/or water bodies, thus interfering with ecosystems and jeopardise biodiversity and human health.

In recent years, public awareness about pollution and long-term sustainability has greatly increased. A lot of effort has been made by legislative institutions, non-profit organisations, and industry in order to control water and soil pollution. Although preventing the formation of polluted sites is generally considered the most suitable, it is often not easy to achieve, and in such instances, the contaminated soil and water need to be treated.

There are various approaches available, which can be defined based on two different criteria: (i) chemical or biological, and (ii) “passive” or “active” systems. Generally, it is considered that biological treatments are applied to biodegradable waste, whereas chemical treatments are used to remove toxic materials that are not effectively removed biologically. However, due to environmental challenges encountered in the use of some chemical treatments, the last few decades have seen a common effort between industry and the scientific community to develop efficient and environmentally friendly biological methods. The increased number in applications of bioremediation, which is defined as the application of the metabolic capabilities of bacteria, fungi, yeast, algae, plants, and microbial mats to degrade harmful contaminants by naturally enhancing degradation processes, is the result of this effort. In bioremediation applications, active biological systems such as sulfidogenic bioreactors are generally more efficient, but require continuous application with a considerable economical cost. On the other hand, passive biological systems (e.g., wetlands or permeable reactive barriers), require relatively little maintenance and costs, but their implementation might be expensive or impractical.

Until recently, the challenges of bioremediation applications have often been described as being their efficiency and their cost, including a lack of controlled process, the treatment time required, the limitation of the range of contaminants and the difficulty in performance evaluations.

Still, our advances in recent years in understanding microbial degradation and bioremediation, as well as our progress in biochemistry, molecular biology, genetic engineering and biotechnology to optimise biological processes have led to an improved understanding of the potential of such microbial and plant-assisted bioremediation for eco-sustainable environment.

Therefore, this Special Issue is an illustration of the recent progress in new or improved technologies and strategies that demonstrate the role and potential of bioremediation as an environmental science to remediate our contaminated environment.

The topics of interest for this Special Issue include but are not limited to the following:

• decontamination using microorganisms (algae, bacteria, and fungi) and plants
• inhibitory effects of pollutants on microbial and plant metabolisms
• biological mechanisms mediating microbial remediation
• new biocatalysts assisting bioremediation
• scale up to pilot and industrial levels
• enzymes and genetically engineered organisms suitable for use in bioremediation
• environmental studies investigating efficiency of bioremediation strategies

Prof. Dr. Sebastien Farnaud
Dr. Eva Pakostova
Guest Editors

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• wastewater treatment
• contaminated soil
• bioremediation
• bioleaching
• phytoremediation
• mycoremediation
• bioventing
• landfarming
• bioreactor
• composting
• bioaugmentation