The current agriculture is facing various challenges to produce enough food to satisfy the need of the human population consumption without having a negative impact on the environment, human health and ecosystems. The exploitation of bioinoculants has been a crucial alternative for green agriculture. Bioinoculants have two great benefits: to promote plant growth by making essential nutrients available to crops and, to increase the tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses by inducing a long-lasting defense. Certain members of genus Trichoderma have been recognized as biocontrol agents, biofertilizers and stress alleviators for the plants. The use of Trichoderma spp. has also been extended to protect and stimulate growth of horticultural crops. Elucidating the plant signaling events triggered by Trichoderma is of high importance in order to understand the molecular basis involving plant protection against stresses. In this review, the signaling elements of the plants from Trichoderma perception through late defensive responses is discussed. Enhanced understanding how Trichoderma spp. activate defense will lead to improvement in the use of species of this genus to increase crop production with the consequent benefits for human health and care for the environment.

Potable and good-quality drinking water availability is a serious global concern, since several pollution sources significantly contribute to low water quality. Amongst these pollution sources, several are releasing an array of hazardous agents into various environmental and water matrices. Unfortunately, there are not very many ecologically friendly systems available to treat the contaminated environment exclusively. Consequently, heavy metal water contamination leads to many diseases in humans, such as cardiopulmonary diseases and cytotoxicity, among others. To solve this problem, there are a plethora of emerging technologies that play an important role in defining treatment strategies. Phytoremediation, the usage of plants to remove contaminants, is a technology that has been widely used to remediate pollution in soils, with particular reference to toxic elements. Thus, hydroponic systems coupled with bioremediation for the removal of water contaminants have shown great relevance. In this review, we addressed several studies that support the development of phytoremediation systems in water. We cover the importance of applied science and environmental engineering to generate sustainable strategies to improve water quality. In this context, the phytoremediation capabilities of different plant species and possible obstacles that phytoremediation systems may encounter are discussed with suitable examples by comparing different mechanistic processes. According to the presented data, there are a wide range of plant species with water phytoremediation potential that need to be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective to make water phytoremediation a viable method.

The objective of the present study was to examine a biological model under greenhouse conditions for the bioremediation of atrazine contaminated soils. The model consisted in a combination of phytoremediation (using Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and rhizopheric bio-augmentation using native Trichoderma sp., and Rhizobium sp. microorganisms that showed no inhibitory growth at 10,000 mg L⁻¹ of herbicide concentration. 33.3 mg of atrazine 50 g⁻¹ of soil of initial concentration was used and an initial inoculation of 1 × 10⁹ UFC mL⁻¹ of Rhizobium sp. and 1 × 10⁵ conidia mL⁻¹ of Trichoderma sp. were set. Four treatments were arranged: Bean + Trichoderma sp. (B+T); Bean + Rhizobium sp. (BR); Bean + Rhizobium sp. + Trichoderma sp. (B+R+T) and Bean (B). 25.51 mg of atrazine 50 g⁻¹ of soil (76.63%) was removed by the B+T treatment in 40 days (a = 0.050, Tukey). This last indicate that the proposed biological model and methodology developed is useful for atrazine contaminated bioremediation agricultural soils, which can contribute to reduce the effects of agrochemical abuse.

The objective of this study was to show an in vitro bioremediation methodology for atrazine-contaminated soils through the use of local strains of native fungi isolated from the Phaseolus vulgaris L rhizosphere present in cultivable soils as well as to evaluate its resistance and capacity for atrazine degradation. A Trichoderma sp. species was identified in three cultivable soils from the Tulancingo Hidalgo, México region (contaminated with and without atrazine), which resisted atrazine concentrations of 10,000 mg L-1. Tests showed that the strain grows exponentially in atrazine-contaminated soil over a range of 105-106 CFU g-1 in 15 days using atrazine as the only carbon and nitrogen source, while the control and witress showed a decrease of 100-103 UFC g-1 in the same period of time. For the atrazine degradation experiments, a treatment of the application of Trichoderma (104 - 105 CFU mL-1) was applied to sterilized and non-sterilized soil contaminated with 500 mg Kg-1 of atrazine, evaluated at four time intervals (5, 10, 20 and 40 days). Statistical differences were found (α=0.050, Tukey) among treatments with the fungi and the test days. The native Trichoderma strain degraded 89% of the atrazine in 40 days. It showed that it is viable and cultivable in soil bioremediation.

The genus Kalanchoe (Crassulaceae) comprises approximately 125 species of succulents distributed across Madagascar, Africa, Arabia, Australia, Southeast Asia, and tropical America. Traditionally regarded as “miracle plants”, Kalanchoe species are employed for treating inflammatory, infectious, metabolic, and cardiovascular conditions; this is associated with their abundant content of polyphenols, including phenolic acids and flavonoids such as quercetin, kaempferol, luteolin, rutin, and patuletin. However, robust clinical evidence remains limited. This review integrates pharmacological and bioinformatic perspectives by analyzing more than 70 studies published since 2000 on 15 species, including Bryophyllum. As an in silico complement, the genome of Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi was used to predict genes (AUGUSTUS), perform homology searches against Arabidopsis thaliana, and model three key enzymes: CHS, CYP90, and VEP1. The AlphaFold2/ColabFold models showed conserved catalytic motifs, and molecular docking with representative ligands supported the plausibility of biosynthetic pathways for flavonoids, brassinosteroids, and bufadienolides. The available evidence highlights chemopreventive, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antioxidant, and cytotoxic activities, primarily associated with flavonoids and bufadienolides. Significant gaps remain, such as the lack of gene–metabolite correlations and the absence of standardized clinical trials. Overall, Kalanchoe represents a promising model that requires multi-omics approaches to enhance its phytopharmaceutical potential.