Vetiver grass-microbe interactions for soil remediation

Abstract

Vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizaniodies) is a plant species with high economic and ecological values. In addition to being planted for essential oil production in over 70 countries, Vetiver was increasingly and successfully applied to soil erosion control, slope stabilization, and rehabilitation of degraded or contaminated lands. Vetiver can tolerate extreme climatic variations, including prolonged drought, flood, submergence, extreme temperature, high levels of salinity, sodicity, acidity, alkalinity, and a wide range of toxic metal(loid)s and organic contaminants. With a fast growth rate, high biomass, noninvasive impacts on local species, tolerance to pollution stress, and specific behavior of the roots, Vetiver is an ideal candidate for phytoremediation and restoration. It is crucial to understand whether the rhizospheric microbes associated with Vetiver play essential roles in stress tolerance. The principal objective of this article is to review the progress made so far in remediating contaminated sites using Vetiver, with emphasis on its interactions with soil microbes. Although little mechanistic information on Vetiver-microbe interactions in improving stress tolerance is available, this review extrapolates potential mechanisms by referring studies focus on plant stress tolerance and microbe-assisted adaptation.

Keywords:

• Oil production
• phytoremediation
• Vetiver-microbe interaction

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Paul Truong for his suggestion in writing this review article, their postgraduate students for technical assistance, and research grants awarded by different funding agents, especially Croucher Foundation and Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially sponsored by Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Soil and Groundwater Pollution Control (No. 2017B030301012) and State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Integrated Surface Water-Groundwater Pollution Control.