Heavy Metal Pollution and Mycorrhiza

Microbes are the first organisms to encounter heavy metal pollution. It reduces microbial diversity. Heavy metals also affect various microbial activities and their growth in soil ecosystem. However, the status of heavy metals in soils is affected by different patterns of land use. Soil pollution by heavy metals causes stress for evolutionary genes for resistance. The ecological and physiological alterations due to heavy metals in the plants having mycorrhizal system, a link between polluted soil and roots of higher plants, which helps the plants in absorption, accumulation, detoxifying and increasing resistance in plants against the heavy metals. Therefore, the improved growth and survival of plants on heavy metal contaminated soils by mycorrhiza has been observed in various afforestation programmes. Selection of microbes which can be more beneficial in agriculture and forestry in phytoremediation of heavy metals is the need of present time. This book is prepared on the experimental study of mycorrhizal system of tree species carried out under various heavy metals pollution. We are quite hopeful that it will be very useful to the Researchers working in the fields of ecology, forestry, agriculture, microbiology and Life Sceinces.