Barriers and guidelines in the use of fungi in pesticide bioremediation: A global overview

The increasing use of synthetic pesticides, driven by global food demand, highlights the need for effective environmental decontamination strategies. Bioremediation represents a sustainable approach, with fungi showing potential due to their unique metabolic capabilities. In this study, we present an overview of the advances, status, and prospects of fungal-based bioremediation of pesticide-contaminated matrices through a systematic literature review with a scientometric approach. Our results show that despite the large number of pesticides tested (171), studies are still limited to the laboratory scale, taking place in two initial stages: i) selection of fungi through tolerance tests; and ii) removal of pesticides on a small scale, mainly in artificial culture media and not in natural matrices such as contaminated soil and water. Although 92 species of fungi have been studied, only a few of them, such as Trametes versicolor and Aspergillus niger, have been tested against several molecules, while the majority have been evaluated for a small number of pesticides. We found that chromatographic techniques stood out as the most effective among the techniques used to verify the efficiency of pesticide removal. In addition, we observed limitations in terms of the techniques, the enzymes involved and identified, and methods for evaluating bioremediation, which do not always reflect the complexity of the process under real conditions. Bioremediation of pesticide-contaminated environments using fungal isolates remains a significant challenge. Progress depends on improved experimental designs that better simulate field conditions and deeper investigation of fungal biochemical pathways.