Metal munching plant discovered in the Philippines

A new plant discovered in the Philippines has a bizarre ability — it can gobble up the poisonous metal nickel without suffering any damage. Scientists from the University of the Philippines, Los Banos found that the plant could accumulate up to 18,000ppm (parts per million) of the metal in its leaves, says Professor Edwino Fernando, lead author of the report published in the open access journal PhytoKeys. Such an amount is a hundred to a thousand times higher than in most other plants.

The new species is called Rinorea niccolifera, reflecting its ability to absorb nickel in very high amounts. It was discovered on the western part of Luzon Island in the Philippines, an area known for soils rich in heavy metals, according to Dr Marilyn Quimado, one of the lead scientists of the research team.

Nickel hyperaccumulation is such a rare phenomenon with only about 0.5-1% of plant species native to nickel-rich soils having been recorded to exhibit the ability. Throughout the world, only about 450 species are known with this unusual trait, which is still a small proportion of the estimated 300,000 species of vascular plants.

Such plants can be used to clean up an area that is contaminated with certain toxic metals. Earlier, other plants have been discovered that eat up and concentrate metals like zinc and cadmium in their leaves or stems.

"Hyperacccumulator plants have great potentials for the development of green technologies, for example, 'phytoremediation' and 'phytomining'", explains Dr Augustine Doronila of the School of Chemistry, University of Melbourne, who is also co-author of the report.

Phytoremediation refers to the use of hyperacccumulator plants to remove heavy metals in contaminated soils. Phytomining, on the other hand, is the use of hyperacccumulator plants to grow and harvest in order to recover commercially valuable metals in plant shoots from metal-rich sites.

Last year, scientists from Wageningen, Netherlands and Lavras, Brazil, had found a plant, Gomphrena claussenii, that easily grows on contaminated soil near zinc mines in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil and takes up large amounts of heavy metals in its leaves and stems. This makes it quite suitable for the purifying soils.

The leaves of the plants ultimately contained almost 1% zinc and more than 0.1% cadmium. The G. claussenii plants store the heavy metals proportionately more in the leaves and stems, and less in the roots, than the G. elegans plants. Scientists estimate that removal of about 5-15 kg of cadmium per hectare per year is entirely realistic. This would cause many contaminants to be brought below minimum safety levels within five years.

The Philippines plant could also be used for similar purposes, doing away with current expensive and carbon-emitting technologies. However, only local plants, adapted to local conditions can do the work.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Metal munching plant discovered in the Philippines

Dengan url

http://uratrefleksi.blogspot.com/2014/05/metal-munching-plant-discovered-in.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Metal munching plant discovered in the Philippines

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Metal munching plant discovered in the Philippines

sebagai sumbernya