Understanding the molecular mechanisms for the enhanced phytoremediation of heavy metals through plant growth promoting rhizobacteria: A review

Abstract

Rapid industrialization, modern agricultural practices and other anthropogenic activities add a significant quantity of toxic heavy metals into the environment, which induces severe toxic effects on all form of living organisms, alter the soil properties and its biological activity. Remediation of heavy metal contaminated sites has become an urgent necessity. Among the existing strategies, phytoremediation is an eco-friendly and much convincing tool for the remediation of heavy metals. However, the applicability of phytoremediation in contaminated sites is restricted by two prime factors such as i) slow growth rate at higher metal contaminated sites and ii) metal bioavailability. This circumstance could be minimized and accelerate the phytoremediation efficiency by incorporating the potential plant growth promoting rhizobacterial (PGPR) as a combined approach. PGPR inoculation might improve the plant growth through the production of plant growth promoting substances and improve the heavy metal remediation efficiency by the secretion of chelating agents, acidification and redox changes. Moreover, rhizobacterial inoculation consolidates the metal tolerance and uptake by regulating the expression of various metal transporters, tolerant and metal chelator genes. However, the exact underlying molecular mechanism of PGPR mediated plant growth promotion and phytoremediation of heavy metals is poorly understood. Thus, the present review provides clear information about the molecular mechanisms excreted by PGPR strains in plant growth promotion and phytoremediation of heavy metals.

Keywords: Chelating agents; Gene expression; Heavy metals; Metal transporters; Phytoremediation; Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria.