Phytoremediation: The Utilization of Plants to Reclaim Polluted Sites

Abstract

The contamination of water and soil with heavy metals is a serious environmental and health hazard. Phytoremediation is the use of plants to remove pollutants, and this offers an alternative to conventional clean-up methods which rely on excavation or the application of detergents and other chemicals. The ideal plant for phytoremediation should tolerate heavy metals and accumulate them in the aerial tissues, should produce large amounts of biomass rapidly, and should develop a deep and extensive root system. Biotechnology offers the opportunity to genetically engineer plants that tolerate and accumulate large amounts of heavy metals in their shoots or that chemically transform and volatilize them. The uptake of heavy metals into plants can also be enhanced by the microbial community in the rhizosphere, which can stimulate root proliferation and increase metal bioavailability. Keywords Phytoremediation Á Transgenic plants Á Metal tolerance Á Effects of rhizosphere microbes 4.1 A Green Technology to Remove Heavy Metals from Soil and Water Agriculture, mining, metallurgy, fossil fuel use, and military operations have dispersed large quantities of heavy metals and metalloids into the environment, posing a serious risk to biodiversity and human health (Wernick and Themelis 1998; Wijnhoven et al. 2007). Conventional methods for cleaning up contaminated sites