Abstract
Phytoremediation is a promising technology that uses plants to absorb contaminants from the environment. Distinctive advantages of phytoremediation are high public acceptance, enhancing environmental safety and cost-effectiveness. Phytoremediation has been used for the remediation of metal-contaminated soils and has two major techniques: hyperaccumulator uptake and chelate-enhanced phytoextraction. A current concern of phytoremediation is the use of genetic-engineered plants that have ability to highly accumulate metals from the soil. The use of genetic-engineered plants may potentially change plant genotypes due to excessive propagation of these species in ecosystems. For a further possibility, metals accumulated by plants from soils can be recovered through metal extraction processes, which has a potential to be an alternative metal recycling system. Therefore, phytoremediation may be a soil remediation technology involving the conservation of mineral resources for near future.
