A Review on Genetically Modified Plants Designed to Phytoremediate Polluted Soils: Biochemical Responses and International Regulation

Coupling Plant Biomass Derived from Phytoremediation of Potential Toxic-Metal-Polluted Soils to Bioenergy Production and High-Value by-Products—A Review

“…Degradation of organic pollutants by the enzymatic plant machinery [15] Rhizodegradation Degradation of organic pollutants in the rhizosphere by rhizospheric microbial communities [16] The most important part of phytoremediation is the identification and establishment of metal-tolerant and metal accumulator plants. After that, different modifications and improvements are made until the creation of never-before-seen developments, such as the design and use of genetically modified plants [9] or the synthesis and use of nanomaterials to phytoremediate polluted sites [17,18].…”

“…Phytoremediation has been used extensively around the world [9]; the benefits of this biotechnology are numerous regarding the simplicity of its application, the cost of application and maintenance, and the fact that it is considered friendly to the environment compared to other chemical or physical techniques. However, the economic feasibility of this technology can be limited by several factors, mainly time-consuming processes, contaminant specificity, limited metabolic-detoxifying capacity, extreme or variable climatological conditions, seasonal variability, and root-limiting growth [19].…”

“…Recently, Basharat et al [66] concluded by means of a literature review that many biological processes in phytoremediation have enough biological knowledge to either develop protocols or start testing modern genetic editing technologies like the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9 nuclease system. Concomitantly, a vast array of biological discoveries ranging from small chelating molecules to transcription factors has been put in the context of its potential of genetic improvement [9,67]. This biological knowledge may be coupled with the abovereviewed engineering strategies to control the amount of metals and compartmentalization in the harvested biomass of phytoremediation sites to satisfy tailored processes that not only conform with legal limits but also push the current limits of our knowledge of the management of post-phytoremediation biomass.…”

“…Phytoremediation uses plants to degrade or extract pollutants from an environment and is based on evolutionary traits developed by plants to deal with environmental challenges, especially ionic homeostasis in the rhizosphere and in plant cells [9].…”

Exploring the Topics of Soil Pollution and Agricultural Economics: Highlighting Good Practices

“…On the other hand, the great challenges for the future, in the issues related with implications of soil pollution from agriculture, will be, for instance, to find a balanced coexistence between environmental pollution management and ecological sustainability [12], the sustainable relationships among the economic and environmental dimensions [13] and the role of genetically modified plants in order to mitigate soil pollution [14].…”