Sheel Ratna, Monika Singh, Adarsh Kumar, Rajesh Kumar
Industries play a crucial role in the economic development of a nation, but they also generate huge amounts of high pollutant-loaded wastewater during the production of various products. Untreated or partially treated discharge of wastewater causes deleterious impact on the environment. A number of physical, chemical, and biological techniques are used to remediate industrial wastewater. Although physicochemical technologies are being applied for industrial wastewater remediation, they have some limitations like being costly and less environmentally friendly. So, biological remediation is cost-effective, nature-friendly, and easy to use for almost all kinds of effluents. Among biological remediation strategies, phytoremediation is considered to be the most suitable method for the remediation of industrial wastewater. However, the phytoremediation process is slow, takes time in application, and some effluents even affect plants’ growth and development. Alternately, plant-microbe interactions could be a winning partner to remediate industrial wastewater more efficiently. So plant growth promoting rhizospheric (PGPR) microbes (bacteria, fungi anf algae) improve plant growth by simultaneously enhancing its phytoremediation efficiency via degradation, sequestration, volatilization, solubilization, mobilization, and bioleaching of industrial wastewater. © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Adarsh Kumar, Saroj Kumar and Sheel Ratna; individual chapters, the contributors.
Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Semarang, Indonesia; Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development, Banaras Hindu University, Uttar Pradesh, India; District Environment Committee, UP, Pilibhit, India; Rhizosphere Biology Laboratory, Department of Microbiology, School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University), Lucknow, India
