Water is known as the universal solvent as a different types of compounds are dissolved in it from simple salt to different gases.
It can absorb and carry with it various nutrients, minerals, and chemicals from different places as it flows or remains stagnant.
This extreme solubility of water is due to its chemical composition, which has electronegative oxygen bonded to two electropositive hydrogen atoms. This makes it a polar molecule, which has partial positive charges on it.
This charge distribution allows the water molecule to interact with other molecules like salts, proteins that are hydrophilic, etc.
The compounds that are to be dissolved in water should either possess an ionic charge on them or should be polar in nature.
Thus, the compounds that can be dissolved in water are ionic compounds, hydrophilic proteins, and polar molecules.