The+advantages+of+using+Mycoremediation.

Advantages of using mycoremediation:
There are many advantages of using mycoremediation. The obvious advantages lie with the minimal cost and effort of setting up a treatment. In comparison to other remedial techniques the cost of inoculating a polluted site with fungi is very minor as the cost of fungi spores is relatively cheap. Fungi will reproduce and expand within the soil on its own accord, only one initial visit is required to set up a treatment. This eliminates the cost of repeated visits to maintain a treatment (Stamet, 1999).

Another advantage of mycoremediation is that it often works were other bioremediation techniques do not, for example in situations where recalcitrant compounds exist or when bioavailability is a problem. Other bioremedial techniques such as microbial remediation require specific environmental conditions for them to work (see microbial remediation). Mycoremediation offers a much more flexible approach as fungi have the ability to grow in a range of environmental situations (Pointing, 2001).

A major advantage of the use of mycoremediation is that in many cases the final result is superior to other remedial techniques. For example the oyster mushroom //Pleurotus ostreatus// has been shown to degrade PAHs by up to 97%. It has also been shown that fungi can degrade complex PAHs with up to 6 benzene rings, a result so far unachievable by other techniques (Cerniglia, 1997).

It is worthy to note the relative infancy of mycoremediation as a science. There is huge potential for the science to grow thanks to the huge number of undiscovered and un-studied species of fungi.



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