phytoremediations.com

Phytoremediation is a process that uses various types of plants to remove, transfer, stabilize, and/or destroy contaminants in the soil and groundwater. For instance, arsenic removal employs naturally selected hyperaccumulator ferns, which accumulate very high concentrations of arsenic specifically in aboveground tissues and in a plant that naturally hyperaccumulates zinc in leaves, approximately ten key metal homeostasis genes are expressed at very high levels. There are several different types of phytoremediation mechanisms, such as Phytoextraction (uptake and concentration of substances from the environment into the plant biomass), Phytostabilization (reducing the mobility of substances in the environment, for example, by limiting the leaching of substances from the soil), Phytotransformation (chemical modification of environmental substances as a direct result of plant metabolism, often resulting in their inactivation, degradation (phytodegradation), or immobilization (phytostabilization)), Phytostimulation (enhancing soil microbial activity for the degradation of contaminants, typically by organisms that associate with roots, or using aquatic plants supporting active populations of microbial degraders, as in the stimulation of atrazine degradation by hornwort), Phytovolatilization (removing substances from soil or water with release into the air, sometimes as a result of phytotransformation to more volatile and/or less polluting substances)