Bioremedition of Contaminated Agricultural Soil by Use of Microbes

Soil is a crucial component of rural and urban environments and in both places, land management is the key to soil quality. This series of technical notes examines the urban activities that cause soil degradation. Accumulation of toxic metals (cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, manganese, chromium, arsenic, potassium, sodium etc. ,) in the agricultural soils is an issue of health concern because toxic metals may be transferred to plant and food which affects the crop yield that causes infertility of agricultural land. The reclamation of metal polluted soils, e. g by using chemical extracts is usually difficult and incomplete. An alternative option is to decrease the transfer of heavy metals from soil to food and by inoculating the soil with microorganisms and they are selected for their ability to absorb heavy metals. The selected microbes were found to grow in the presence of high level heavy metals in laboratory conditions. The aim of the present work is to give an overview of the heavy metal contaminant in agricultural soil and also the mechanism of removal of these toxic metals from the contaminated sources by the application of potential microbes.