Phytoremediation of sediment polluted with organic pollutants

Abstract

Environmental pollution has been emphasized in recent decades as one of the main consequences of rapid development, the generation of large amounts of waste containing high levels of contaminants (Zhang et al., 2020). The use of plants in reducing pollution, i.e., phytoremediation, is the most acceptable method of decontamination from an environmental point of view. In this process, plant species are used to remove pollutants or render them harmless by extraction, sequestration, degradation, or detoxication (Rascio et al., 2011; Pandey et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2020). It is well known that non-hyperaccumulating Brassica species have potential for heavy metal accumulation and can tolerate high concentrations of heavy metals in their shoots. However, there is a little data on phytoremediation of organic pollutants. Thus, the objective of this study was to assess if the rapeseed (Brassica napus) as energy crop, has potential to be used for phytoextraction of organic pollutants such as PAHs, PCBs and mineral oil from soil from POT trials. The effect of different type of rapeseed potential to uptake organic pollutants was compared to other energy crops such as sunflower, hemp, white mustard.