Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Plants Extracting Arsenic from Soil

http://www.livescience.com/4063-plant-extracts-arsenic-polluted-soil.html

I LOVE PLANTS! Plants taste good, look good, smell good, and now they are genetically modifying plants to absorb toxins from the ground! SAY WHAT! Plant Biologists are genetically modifying plants to cleaning up hazardous waste left over by long term pesticides, insecticides and herbicides. 

Nowadays we have serious technology and really smart researchers who are taking advantage of (in a good way) of nature in order to purify soil as well as the air.  A method known as “phytoremediation”, it has been proven by scientist to remove arsenic from the soil. 

Take for example, Arabidopsis, a created member of the mustard family, it has been genetically modified to to be arsenic-resistant and to remove the arsenic found in the soil and it collects the hazardous material in its shoots.  It has been proven that this plant soaks up 16 times more arsenic that normal Arabidopsis.  Though the process might take a while, it is a step forward in the right direction to reduce more harmful chemicals in the environment.      

1 comment:

  1. As many important elements that make up our environment, plants are one of them. plants provide us food, oxygen, woods and etc. It is truly remarkable how scientists could make plants more useful. With the genetic modification, plants can be used to remove toxin from the soil. If this process can be carried down successfully, then will vastly improve our farming techniques. The food production will be greatly benefited from applying this method.

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