A Plant That Actually Eats Heavy Metal Has Recently Been Discovery at Philipine

ninja boy · Post time 3-7-2014 12:47 PM

Evolving of plants has seen themexclude any type of metal from their surroundings. The Rinorea Niccoliferahowever, is not like most plants. It was discovered in the Philippine jungles;this plant can amass up to 18,000 ppm of metal in its roots and leaves and notget poisoned. This is like 100 to 1000 times what normal plants take in.University of Philippines-Los, Banos researchers, in a new report said that itsability to accumulate such huge amounts of toxic metals could be the solutionto most toxic waste sites found around the world. The discovery is thereforevery important.

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image source: www.takepart.com

The tree issmall, 1.8 meters tall normally and with a stem that ranges from 3 to 13centimeters in diameter. The Niccolifera name refers to thespecies ability to hyper-accumulate nickel, a heavy metal, in its leaf tissuesand stem.

This species is unfortunately endangered and its habitat has been termed asseverely ‘fragmented’. Its recordings have so far been from three adjacentlocalities only, from its current location which is less than 500 km anddeclining. The study indicates that the species is open to industrializationand open pit mining.

It goes on to say that, since this plant species is a ‘hyper-accumulator’, itshould be exploited for its accumulation traits like environmentally greentechnologies. This plant can be used to clean up metal filled soils and oldmines. The leaves and roots can later be burned and the valuable metals gottencan be sold and re-purposed.

"Hyper accumulator plants have great potentials for the development ofgreen technologies, for example, 'phytoremediation' and 'phytomining'," saidAugustine Doronila, co-author of the paper on the plant species and aresearcher at the University Of Melbourne, Australia.

Phytoremediation is the use of hyper accumulator plants to extract heavy metalsfrom contaminated soils. On the other hand, Phytomining is the use of theseplants to grow and harvest, so as to recover valuable commercial metals in theshoots of the plants in metal-rich sites.

The use of plants to extract metals from soil that’s contaminated is not newand has been used since the 1990’s. Countries that use this type of greentechnology include Thailand, India, Brazil and China.

We should try and save these kinds of species in their native habitat sincethey can be used to clean up after us. Maybe it’s time we worked with natureinstead of the continuous destruction we have been subjecting it to.

“If we can understand the chemistry of how these plants can load themselveswith so much nickel without being poisoned, it may help us make novel compoundsto combat some degenerative disease,” Doronila said. “If we are toallow mining or logging in these areas, we have to oblige the miners and theloggers to restore these habitats.”