Environmental Biotechnology: Basic Concepts and Applications

The field of Environmental Sciences has acquired new dimensions in the last fifty years, due to the changing scenario of population explosion, agricultural activities for food production, rapid industrial development for commercial and household commodities and so on. The upsurge in all these activities has contributed in one way or the other to environmental problems at the local, regional and global levels. Economic growth and the continuing heavy consumption of natural resources and energy are responsible for global environmental crisis like global warming, acid rain and the destruction of the ozone layer. This has resulted in an increased interest in this area and most institutions today have included it as a part of their educational curriculum. Environmental biotechnology is a huge and fast growing field, which continues to revolutinise the understanding of basic life sustaining processes in the environment, by identifying and exploiting the biomolecules and their utilities to provide clean technologies, in order to counter environmental problems