PatIntNews

Phytoremediation is a type of bioremediation in which plants sequester or biodegrade environmental contaminants. In the recent years this technology has advanced with an extensive development towards removal of arsenic, nickel, petroleum hydrocarbons, pesticides and other metals and chemicals, from soil and ground water. With the advancement and more knowledge of plant genetics, when we are able to produce more transgenic plants, this technology may move closer to the forefront of green technologies.

Companies are exploring new ways of using hyper accumulating plants for phytomining for example alyssum species have been found to be sequestering nickel naturally while some other plants take up metals like zinc and cadmium.

Phytoremediation projects, however takes long time to complete but have advantages of sequestering even small quantities of metals from soil, with less cost than "dig-and-dump" approach which could be a fall back.

Moreover, it has been found that many plants can bioaccumulate metals in their tissues which can be harvested and incinerated for recovery of the metal impacts. Now there is a need of development of more of transgenic plants which can tolerate the oxidative stress caused by metal accumulation, or have full sets of enzymes for degrading organic contaminants.