Organic matter effect on phytoremediation of cadmium contaminated soils

Abstract

Phytoremediation refers to clean-up of polluted sites, terrestrial as well as aquatic environments, from heavy metal and organic contaminants by plants. A good phytoremediador plant should ideally have high and fast biomass production, and ability to translocate the pollutants into the shoot. In the last few years, great efforts have been directed to the search of hyperaccumulator plants and the study of their tolerance mechanisms. Due to its high toxicity to bioorganisms and its high solubility in water, cadmium is one of the most problematic heavy metal pollutants. Cadmium is considered biologically as a non-essential trace metal, although at low concentration it was found to have stimulatory effects on plants growth and on some physiological functions.