Recent trends in bioremediation of pollutants by enzymatic approaches

Microbial enzymes play a tremendous role in the bioremediation of xenobiotics/pollutants. In these days, the use of pesticides has become a major need to improve the crop productivity in order to meet the demand for food for the growing population all over the world. Therefore, the pesticides have become an integral part of the modern agriculture. Rapid industrialization also becomes an important source of pollution due to the release of untreated/partially treated waste materials from different industries globally. Therefore, in addition to pesticides other pollutants such as antibiotics, heavy metals, and industrial wastewater pollutants, i.e., hydrocarbons, aromatic substances, diphenylmethane, chlorine compounds, surfactants, and dyes, also dramatically pollute the environment. In this chapter, we mainly focused on the recent advancements in enzyme technology for the bioremediation of pollutants from the environment and bioconversion of agro-based wastes into value-added products.