# The Quirky Rot Fungi: Underexploited Potential for Soil Remediation and Rehabilitation
## 1 Soil Ecology, Health, and Erosion Control
### Pesticides  
It is indisputable that pesticides have been introduced to many sectors, especially in the global demand for satisfying food production. The benefits include, among many others, increasing crop yields by protecting crops against pests, diseases, and weeds (the maintenance and prevention of post-harvest crop losses), increasing the quality of food products, reducing the need for pest control methods and the adjacent workforce, and allowing the monetization of investments and profits for small and medium-sized producers [23]. However, the balance between its use and environmental and health safety to minimize risks to ecosystems and human populations is becoming increasingly impaired. Indiscriminate use, inadequate storage and disposal, or ignorance of more environmentally friendly alternatives are the main precursors of consequences (i) at an environmental level, related to the loss of biodiversity, the contamination of matrices (soil, water, and air), and interfering with ecosystem functions such as nutrient recycling and pollination; (ii) at the level of human health, correlating with occupational exposure, but also related to the increase in pesticide residues in products that reach consumers, and even incurring economical losses since the poor management of these products can lead to lower crop yields due to damaged ecosystems and poor soil health and require greater investment in research into alternatives (Figure 2). Taken together, the recurrent and long-term use of pesticides in agriculture has led to significant soil contamination. Agricultural practices involving pesticides have been identified as the main factor in soil degradation, with approximately 60% of soil already  
Figure 2: The ecosystem services affected by the three explored scenarios of soil degradation and an overview of the main characteristics of rot fungi that can be harnessed and fostered to restore and reclaim soils in these contexts. The thickness of the lines indicates the more or less direct an action on a given ecosystem service is, and it should be noted that only some more relevant directions are explored. flagged as degraded. However, this figure is set to reach 90% by 2050 [24]. A survey on the prevalence of pesticide residues in European soils revealed that 83% of the tested European agricultural soil samples were positive for pesticide residues and over 50% contained multiple pesticide compounds. Commonly detected pesticides include glyphosate, boscalid, epoxiconazole, and tebuconazole. The presence of these residues poses significant ecological risks, particularly to soil organisms, with 14% of sites exhibiting potential harm from pesticide mixtures, primarily due to insecticides such as imidalcoprid and chlorpyrifos and the fungicide epoxiconazole. These findings underscore the need for sustainable agricultural practices and stricter regulations to mitigate the long-term effects of pesticide use on soil health and biodiversity in Europe [25]. In the context of the remediation of pesticide-contaminated soils, white-rot fungi have been studied for some time, but in a very scattered manner, not systematically. However, many studies have reported promising results on the ability of rot fungi to degrade a wide array of persistent organic pollutants and have put forward the idea of rot fungi as a promising green remediation tool [26; 27]. This ability arises from the secretion of extracellular and powerful oxidative enzymes, such as lignin peroxidase, manganese peroxidase, and lactose [28]. These enzymes break down complex chemical structures in the same way that rot fungi depolymerize lignin and other recalcitrant molecules in their normal functions in nature. The patterns of degradation may include the generation of reactive radicals that enable the decomposition of pesticides into less toxic compounds by destabilizing the organic molecules, as well as the direct attack of extracellular enzymes on the chemical bonds of the compounds, leading to cleavage through oxidation or hydrolysis [28; 29].