Role of Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria in Remediation of Fluoride Toxicity

There is a wide distribution of microorganisms, especially bacteria in the rhizospheric region of plants, these microbes assist nutrient uptake in plants and aid plants in fighting certain diseases. These bacteria known as plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) in turn benefits from plants. Contamination of the environment by harmful chemical pollutants is a global challenge that kept surging since the advent of industrial revolution. Fluoride is one of major ever-increasing, natural pollutant in the soil and ground water. Though the interactions between fluoride and bacterial species found in groundwater are yet to be well understood, the interface between the PGPR and plant’s rhizospheric area lessens the damaging impacts of the pollutants and enhances plants’ capacity to resist or tolerate non biotic stress. These resulting benefits of the interaction between the PGPRs and the plants are normally discovered via isolation of PGPRs from high fluoride contaminated regions or via exposure of cells to fluoride concentrations under monitored and controlled laboratory settings. PGPRs can be effective employed for bioremediating soil and water contaminated with fluoride for the soil environment. This chapter focus on an in-depth appraisal of the role of PGPRs in fluoride bioremediation and highlights the significance of PGPRs in the improvement of soil well-being and mitigating the harmful effects of fluoride contamination. These were discussed under prevailing topics such as environmental sources of fluorides, anthropogenic sources of fluorides, mechanism of fluoride bioremediation using PGPRs and efficiency of PGPRs in fluoride bioremediation and other related topics. PGPRs can be adopted as environmentally friendly means of mitigating fluoride contamination.