The Effect of Phytoremediation of Heavy Metal by Orok-Orok (Crotalaria sp.) On the Growth of Aloe Vera

Abstract

One of the most important problems in peatland is contamination of soil and water by toxic substances, mainly heavy metal such as Al and Pb. Phytoremediation could be used as an alternative technique to overcome this problem. Phytoremediation is defined as clean up of pollutans primarily mediated by hyperaccumulator plants. These plants have several beneficial characteristics such as the ability to accumulate metal in their roots and an especially high tolerance to heavy metals. This research was carried out to study the potencies of local species to accumulate Al and Pb. Four place, two species were collected from several location and then the Al and Pb accumulated in each species were analyzed. The result showed that some species accumulated Al and Pb in high concentration such as Crotalaria juncea L. (1999.43mg kg -1 Aluminium (83%)) and Crotalaria mucronata (1555.33 mg kg -1 (80%)). A series of research is needed toprove that these species are potential as heavy metal accumulators.