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Contribution of the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis to heavy metal phytoremediation

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Abstract

High concentrations of heavy metals (HM) in the soil have detrimental effects on ecosystems and are a risk to human health as they can enter the food chain via agricultural products or contaminated drinking water. Phytoremediation, a sustainable and inexpensive technology based on the removal of pollutants from the environment by plants, is becoming an increasingly important objective in plant research. However, as phytoremediation is a slow process, improvement of efficiency and thus increased stabilization or removal of HMs from soils is an important goal. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi provide an attractive system to advance plant-based environmental clean-up. During symbiotic interaction the hyphal network functionally extends the root system of their hosts. Thus, plants in symbiosis with AM fungi have the potential to take up HM from an enlarged soil volume. In this review, we summarize current knowledge about the contribution of the AM symbiosis to phytoremediation of heavy metals.

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Abbreviations

AM:

Arbuscular mycorrhizal

HM:

Heavy metals

EC50 :

Effective concentration reducing germination or hyphal growth to 50%

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Acknowledgements

We apologize to all those researchers whose work we overlooked or could not include because of page limitations. We are grateful to Patrick King for critical reading of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biology and Plant Biology, University of Geneva, 30 Quai Ernest Ansermet, CH-1211, Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Vera Göhre

  2. Department of Plant Biology, University of Geneva, 30 Quai Ernest Ansermet, CH-1211, Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Uta Paszkowski

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  1. Vera Göhre
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  2. Uta Paszkowski
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Correspondence to Uta Paszkowski.

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Göhre, V., Paszkowski, U. Contribution of the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis to heavy metal phytoremediation. Planta 223, 1115–1122 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-006-0225-0

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