Phytomanagement of metal-contaminated agricultural land using crop species
Metal contamination of agricultural soils harms the economy and is a human health risk. There is a need to develop low-cost technologies for removing metals from soil. We investigated the use of the crop plants (maize, tobacco and sunflower) combined with soil conditioners to produce non-food crops and simultaneously extract metal contaminants. We tested the effects of elemental sulphur, nitrolotriacetic acid (NTA) and (NH<,1>)<,2>SO<,4> on plant metal extraction. These amendments had previously been shown to enhance metal uptake in greenhouse experiments. In our field study, only elemental S effectively increased metal extraction by crops. Sulphur addition increased the cadmium extraction of sunflower and tobacco but not maize, while zinc extraction increased in all three species. The treatments had no effect on the species copper uptake. This study shows that with regard to inducing metal uptake by plant, results obtained from pot experiments cannot directly be extrapolated to the field situation. Sulphur addition is a low cost means of enhancing the plant uptake of some contaminants into non-food crops. Thus, contaminated lands could be put into biofuel production, with the crops gradually reducing the contaminant burden in the soil.
bioenergy elemental sulfur NTA phytoextraction phytoremediation
E. Fassler B. Robinson R. Schulin S. K. Gupta
Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland Agroscope Reckenholz-T nik Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland Agroscope Reckenholz-T nikon Research Station (ART), 8046 Zurich, Switzerland
国际会议
第九届痕量元素生物地球化学国际会议(9th International Conference on the Biogeochemistry of Trace Elements)
北京
英文
264-265
2007-07-15（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）