Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce the opening of a new Special Issue in the Applied Sciences journal.

Environmental pollution is one of the global problems of our time. The group of pollutants that pose serious threats to humans and the environment include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are components of petroleum and coal tars; surfactants, which form the basis for many industrial and domestic detergents; different types of synthetic dyes, which are used on a large scale in consumer products; oil and oil products, which are the most large-scale and ubiquitous pollutants of soil environments; of course, different types of plastics; and many, many others. The Special Issue, entitled “Searching for Solutions to Soil Pollution,” will present new knowledge that would make it possible to solve urgent problems closely related to the contamination of the environment by persistent pollutants and to answer to the necessity of studying the detoxification abilities of a wide range of organisms for the development of effective ecological biotechnologies.

Bioremediation is the technology of the remediation of nature by using living organisms; it is important and, in some cases, the main instrument for the decontamination of contaminated sites. This technology has been used for a few decades, but it has an essential defect. It is unpredictable because of the influence of many factors of environments on biochemical processes. The main agents of the decontamination of nature from pollutants are microorganisms and fungi, which have strong metabolic potential and can mineralize almost all organic compounds. However, the biotechnologies in use do not give the necessary results because biochemical processes in environmentally contaminated conditions are insufficiently studied, and global warming is bringing significant changes in the natural cycles of the conversion of biogenic elements.

With this perspective, this Special Issue aims to contribute to the field, presenting the most relevant advances in the basic and applied aspects of bioremediation technology.

The topics proposed for this Special Issue include but are not limited to the following:

• risks associated with soil contamination by different types of pollutants
• toxicology and monitoring of pollutants in contaminated soils
• the fundamental basis for the development of technologies for bioremediation, phytoremediation, mycoremediation, etc.
• the practical uses of environmental biotechnologies

We hope you will contribute your high-quality research and we look forward to reading your valuable results.

Dr. Natalia Pozdnyakova
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• soil pollution
• toxicology and monitoring of pollutants
• bioremediation
• phytoremediation
• mycoremediation