Farming metals from plants! - by Srushti Bhamre.

Do you ever realize how much pollution occurs by the mining of heavy metals and purification processes?  That involves Air pollution, Soil pollution and water pollution. Is there any sustainable and powerful way to reduce that? Ans is Yes. There exists an interesting technique which is farming metals from plants.

     Some plants are literally metals. Not only venus flytrap but also Alyssum murale like plants ooze out metals. The absorption of heavy metals is done by their roots and metals are accumulated in roots, flowers, stem etc. These plants are ‘hyperaccumulators’. Alyssum murale plant accumulates nickel.

     Let’s consider one model, After mining nickel, we take it through all purification processes like smelting. This requires lots of energy which is actually given by fossil fuels and causes pollution. Mining is not also environment friendly. Plants are actually run on solar energy, so we are utilizing renewable energy for mining and purification of metals itself in plants( Isn’t it amazing..).According to data, 30 gm per kg nickel is present in plant-like Alyssum murale. Extracting metals from plants is called ‘Bio Harvesting’ or ‘phytomining’.So, we are actually doing that. Another research is going in the direction of accumulation of Cu and Zn.

     We can use this concept for clearing all metals from mining sites(This heavy metal causes health problems to humans and animals.).We can plant those plants and soak out all traces of heavy metals from that place. This is actually done by researchers and used it for making carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles. It is instrumental in electronics and energy technologies like PV.

    This research is in the beginning stage, but quite interesting...Let’s hope it will go in the right and useful direction.

Ref: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Dry-weight-DW-g-pot-of-leaves-stems-and-roots-of-Alyssum-murale-plants-grown-under_fig1_230712690

Thank you, Srushti Bhamare(1st-year UG, DESE) for the Blog