Bioremediation of Microalgae-Based Pesticides

Pesticides are generally synthetic compounds used in agriculture to combat diseases caused by pests in crops and at the same time increase productivity. Around 2.7 million tons of these compounds are applied around the world each year. Nevertheless, the intensified use of agrotoxics can cause severe impacts in different environmental matrices, mainly in soil and water bodies due to their accumulation and persistence. Pesticides can seriously affect human health, as they can induce hormonal and reproductive changes, liver and kidney damage, immune dysfunction, cognitive and neuromotor disorders and cancer. In addition, these compounds can affect species in different ecosystems. Therefore, effective technologies are needed to remove these pollutants. Currently, the processes for eliminating xenobiotic compounds are focused on the use of biological and environmentally sustainable materials and economic strategies through approaches to bioremediation processes, being microalgae one of the microorganisms with promising results. In this work, the different mechanisms of pesticide removal by microalgae and the different methods that can be used to increase the removal capacity by these microorganisms were addressed.