Original Articles
Sekar Kumaran, Gunasekaran Dhi
Abstract
Phytoremediation is a technology that involves plants and trees to clean up the contaminated soils and ground water. The technology is based on the natural abilities of certain plants to bioaccumulate, degrade or convert the toxic contaminant into less harmful chemicals. Plants absorb water and nutrient through roots, and act as a transformation system to metabolize organic compounds or absorb and bioaccumulate toxic heavy metals such as copper, lead and zinc up to a (10-4) concentration. Ability to tolerate the kind and quantity of contamination is another important factor in this regard. We investigated the physiological capacity of Golden Doranda, Balsam and Erwa plants in tolerating heavy metals in order to use them as an alternative approach for rehabilitating contaminated soils. The efficiency of metal removal by those plants were determined by pot culturing, and the analysis of heavy metals in the whole plant was done using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy. These plants were also examined for their efficiency in removing chromium from the industrial effluents. In addition, the effect of heavy metals on seed germination especially in Balsam was studied.