Bioremediation of pesticides using microbial consortium: Challenges and future perspectives

The widespread use of pesticides causes serious environmental and health problems. Pesticide use not only degrades soil quality but also enters the aquatic environment, so decontamination of pesticide-contaminated areas is a very complex process. The conventional methods used to remove polluting chemicals from the environment are not sufficient for the removal of pesticides. New technologies such as environmentally friendly, economical, and versatile bioremediation methods are required that take advantage of the ability of microorganisms to remove pollution from the environment. The use of microbial consortia has very important advantages in the bioremediation of pollution caused by pesticides. In this chapter, recent applications of microbial consortia used in pesticide bioremediation are discussed. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.