Mycosorption: A sustainable approach towards an emerging concern for removal of heavy metal(s) contaminant from aquatic systems

[Display omitted] •Mycosorption is an efficient, cost-competitive, and eco-friendly process.•Inclusive state-of-art on the fungal-mediated sorption of selected heavy metals.•Chelation, complexation, ion exchange and sorption are primary mycosorption mechanisms.•Emphasis is given on factors for process development, patents, and literature in the past two decades.•Recent developments in the field are discussed to build up eco-friendly fungal sorbents. Heavy metals are a significant cause of soil and water pollution, primarily due to human developmental activities, including agriculture, industrialisation, landfilling and waste disposal. In substantial concentrations, copper, chromium, cadmium, lead, and nickel are the primary heavy metals in wastewater. From our knowledge, conventional techniques are an intriguing aspect widely applied to remove heavy metal contamination. Interestingly, heavy metals are present in muffled concentrations in contaminated water, so using conventional techniques is not feasible due to their cost and toxic waste generation. As a result, various biological sorbent materials are gaining widespread attention due to their economic value, ecofriendly nature, and reusability. Mycosorption is one of the vital sustainable methods for metal removal. This review aimed to expand the current knowledge about mycosorption, various surface modifications which affect the sorption capacity of biomass, a better understanding of various mechanisms which play a significant role, different factors that affect mycosorption, as well as reusability of biomass and recovery of metals. This manuscript also highlights recent findings, process development at a commercial scale, patented mycosorption studies and the number of publications published since now. We describe radical solutions for metal(s) removal as a sustainable environmental approach.