Environmental & Analytical Toxicology

The Phytoremediation Technique for Cleaning up Contaminated Soil By Amaranthus sp.

Abstract

Parisa Ziarati *,Somaye Alaedini

Phytoremediation is the biotechnological application of plants to detoxify pollutants, and is an ideal and modern technique for environmental clean-up. Regarding the vast industrial waste materials and sewages from a lot factories and different chemical fertilizers and pesticides have caused contamination of soils in Tehran, potential ability of Amaranthus to phytoextract lead, cadmium, copper, nickel and zinc was investigated and Compare of the soil pH and the phytoextraction rate based on different growth stages of the plant. Determine metal transfer factors from soil (TFS) of Amaranthus and the effect of adding black and green tea leaves in soil and the metal transfer factors have been studied. Results indicated that the younger plants have more potential to uptake and concentrate the studied heavy metals than the older ones and the uptake rate is significantly affected by the plant accumulation and the soil pH. The best results for uptake of Lead was in the soil with pH=6.5 among different samples and in this pH translocation factor was the highest by 45 days grown of plants while the best result of Cadmium phytoextract was in pH of soil 6.3 by 35 days growth of plants.
The maximum Zinc, Copper and Nickel uptake rate was in pH= 6.1 and by 30 day grown Amaranth. Regarding the results of the present study, it is recommended to study more on the species belong to other plant families that have potential ability to hyper accumulate heavy metals especially the inedible plants.