Perspectives of using fungi as bioresource for bioremediation of pesticides in the environment: a critical review.
Pesticides are used for controlling the development of various pests in agricultural crops worldwide. Despite their agricultural benefits, pesticides are often considered a serious threat to the environment because of their persistent nature and the anomalies they create. Hence removal of such pesticides from the environment is a topic of interest for the researchers nowadays. During the recent years, use of biological resources to degrade or remove pesticides has emerged as a powerful tool for their in situ degradation and remediation. Fungi are among such bioresources that have been widely characterized and applied for biodegradation and bioremediation of pesticides. This review article presents the perspectives of using fungi for biodegradation and bioremediation of pesticides in liquid and soil media. This review clearly indicates that fungal isolates are an effective bioresource to degrade different pesticides including lindane, methamidophos, endosulfan, chlorpyrifos, atrazine, cypermethrin, dieldrin, methyl parathion, heptachlor, etc. However, rate of fungal degradation of pesticides depends on soil moisture content, nutrient availability, pH, temperature, oxygen level, etc. Fungal strains were found to harbor different processes including hydroxylation, demethylation, dechlorination, dioxygenation, esterification, dehydrochlorination, oxidation, etc during the biodegradation of different pesticides having varying functional groups. Moreover, the biodegradation of different pesticides was found to be mediated by involvement of different enzymes including laccase, hydrolase, peroxidase, esterase, dehydrogenase, manganese peroxidase, lignin peroxidase, etc. The recent advances in understanding the fungal biodegradation of pesticides focusing on the processes, pathways, genes/enzymes and factors affecting the biodegradation have also been presented in this review article.
Department of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Zahid
Z
Maqbool
Department of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan. sabirghani@gmail.com.|UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Sciences, University College Dublin, Belfield Dublin 4, Ireland. sabirghani@gmail.com.
Sabir
S
Hussain
Department of Soil Science, Muhammad Nawaz Shareef University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan.|Environmental Microbiology, Soil Science Division, Nuclear Institute for Agriculture and Biology (NIAB), Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Muhammad
M
Imran
Department of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Faisal
F
Mahmood
Department of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Tanvir
T
Shahzad
Department of Environmental Sciences, PMAS Arid Agricultural University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Zulfiqar
Z
Ahmed
Department of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Farrukh
F
Azeem
Department of Microbiology, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Saima
S
Muzammil
D001673:Biodegradation, Environmental; D005658:Fungi / Q000378:metabolism*; D010575:Pesticides / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism
D010575:Pesticides
Biodegradation; Bioremediation; Fungi; Metabolic pathways; Pesticides; enzymes