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REVIEW article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Water and Wastewater Management
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1340565
This article is part of the Research Topic Diffuse agricultural water pollution: nutrient capture, recovery, and recycling systems View all 3 articles

An Integrated Mitigation Approach to Diffuse Agricultural Water Pollution -A Scoping Review

Provisionally accepted
  • Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Non-point source pollution and water eutrophication from agricultural runoff present global challenges that impact ground and surface waters. The search for a feasible and sustainable mitigation strategy to combat this issue remains ongoing. This scoping review aims to explore one potential solution by examining relevant literature on agricultural practices of the past and recent edge-of-field measures, designed to ameliorate the impacts of agricultural runoff on soil and water quality. The study focuses on integrating findings from diverse research fields into a novel myco-phytoremediation approach, which involves the synergistic relationship of plants, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and plant beneficial bacteria within vegetative buffer strips. The implementation of these augmented buffer strips enhances nutrient retention in the soil, reduces runoff volume, promotes biodiversity, and increases plant biomass. This biomass can be converted into biochar, an effective sorbent that can be used to filter dissolved and particulate nutrients from surface waterways. The resulting nutrient-rich biochar can be repurposed as a form of bio-fertiliser, optimizing fertiliser consumption and subsequently reducing the depletion rate of phosphorus, a limited resource. This paper investigates a circular model of abatement of agricultural runoff via maximal nutrient retention and subsequent recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus back into the agricultural system. The key impact lies in its contribution to addressing the issue of non-point source pollution and eutrophication by encouraging multidisciplinary research aimed at solving these complex environmental issues.

    Keywords: arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, Phosphate solubilising bacteria, biochar, Mycophytoremediation, Nutrient runoff, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Eutrophication

    Received: 18 Nov 2023; Accepted: 21 Mar 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Quill, Ferreira, Joyce, Coleman, Martins, Hodkinson, Trimble, Gill and O'Connell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: David O'Connell, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Dublin 2, County Dublin, Ireland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.