Role of Rhizobacteria in Phytoremediation of Heavy Metals

Abstract

Rhizobacteria, a plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) as beneficial microorganism which helps in defense from abiotic and abiotic stresses, colonizes in rhizosphere and played a major role in promoting plant growth and also provides enhance soil fertility. In the highly contaminated soil, the content of metal exceeds the limits of plant tolerance. It is also possible that treatment of plant with PGPR, here increasing the biomass of plant, stabilizing and the remediation of metal polluted soil. The use of rhizobacteria plays and important role in increasing the tolerance of plant towards toxic effects of heavy metals like arsenic, sulphur, mercury, chromium, cadmium, nickel, lead and copper etc. Heavy metal accumulation results in deterioration of soil fertility while PGPR helps to restore soil fertility. The process of phytoremediation has been proved to be the best way to remediate heavy metals from soil. The use of rhizobacteria with plants provides highly efficiency phytoremediation. However, there is still need to understanding the concept of microbial ecological study in rhizosphere and mechanism of detoxification of heavy metals form rhizosphere.