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A Review about the Mycoremediation of Soil Impacted by War-like Activities: Challenges and Gaps

Journal of Fungi 2024 13 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 50 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.

Regina Geris, Lourdes Cardoso de Souza Neta, Marcos Malta, Natan Silva Pereira Luar Aguiar Soares, Luar Aguiar Soares, Lourdes Cardoso de Souza Neta, Madson de Godoi Pereira, Natan Silva Pereira Miguel de Serpa Soares, Vanessa da Silva Reis, Vanessa da Silva Reis, Madson de Godoi Pereira, Natan Silva Pereira

Summary

This review examines the potential of mycoremediation, using fungi to clean up soils contaminated by war-related activities such as military training and shooting ranges. Researchers found that while fungi have shown success in removing metals, explosives, and other war-derived pollutants in lab settings, real-world applications in conflict zones remain extremely limited. The study identifies scaling up from laboratory to field conditions as the primary challenge for this emerging remediation approach.

(1) Background: The frequency and intensity of war-like activities (war, military training, and shooting ranges) worldwide cause soil pollution by metals, metalloids, explosives, radionuclides, and herbicides. Despite this environmentally worrying scenario, soil decontamination in former war zones almost always involves incineration. Nevertheless, this practice is expensive, and its efficiency is suitable only for organic pollutants. Therefore, treating soils polluted by wars requires efficient and economically viable alternatives. In this sense, this manuscript reviews the status and knowledge gaps of mycoremediation. (2) Methods: The literature review consisted of searches on ScienceDirect and Web of Science for articles (1980 to 2023) on the mycoremediation of soils containing pollutants derived from war-like activities. (3) Results: This review highlighted that mycoremediation has many successful applications for removing all pollutants of war-like activities. However, the mycoremediation of soils in former war zones and those impacted by military training and shooting ranges is still very incipient, with most applications emphasizing explosives. (4) Conclusion: The mycoremediation of soils from conflict zones is an entirely open field of research, and the main challenge is to optimize experimental conditions on a field scale.

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