Solutions to Mitigate Agrotoxics in Drinking Water

This study focuses on showing drinking water problems, sustaining environmental conditions, river basin improvement, and heavy metals concentration reduction, using selected plants as a nature-based solution for degraded wetland ecosystems. Unconventional water treatments are increasingly tested as phytoremediation is an auxiliary part of effluent treatment systems or sanitary waste, which eliminate or mitigate toxic molecules present in water. Selected plants are intensively used for revegetation of degraded river basins and water amelioration systems throughout small-scale constructed wetlands in water bodies near to factories. Large-scale constructed wetlands use different plants. Several plants occur in natural wetlands and can be used in constructed ones. Many of those plants associate with arbuscular mycorrhizae fungi (AMF) plant-fungal ecological studies pointed out that among commonly used plants, vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides) and Urochloa brizantha, having vigorous deep roots, commonly used for revegetation and for arbuscular mycorrhizae (AMF) multiplication, respectively, developing infective propagules. Thypha species grow and are cultivated for sustainable water systems. Cyperaceae representants were also investigated. In the present study, recent reports on drinking water characteristics and amelioration were compiled to disseminate knowledge on water quality, treatment and conservation. Among vegetation types, the best candidate is Vetiver grass, which is resistant to pests and diseases being tolerant to climatic variations, probably by its efficient absorption of nutrients and the occurrence of associated AMF, most of Glomeraceae. Due to its economic importance for sustainable agricultural production and other uses besides its environmental services, as important promoters of soil health in wetlands, more detailed research is needed on the biotic interactions and inoculant production in those studied plants.