Toleration and Accumulation of Cotton to Heavy Metal - Potential Use for Phytoremediation

ABSTRACT

Heavy metal contamination of agricultural soil has become a critical issue worldwide. A sustainable approach to mitigate heavy metal contamination is extremely important. Phytoremediation has been proved to be a well alternative for soil remediation as cost-effective, environment friendly, and esthetically pleasing. This review briefly elucidates heavy metal tolerance, uptake, and the corresponding mechanism in cotton, and discusses the risk of heavy metal residues and the socioeconomic benefits, to further assess cotton planting for phytoremediation of heavy metal-contaminated soils. Cotton plant has a relatively large biomass, a profuse toot system, and exhibits very excellent tolerance and enrichment capacity of heavy metals. Heavy metals residue in cotton was low. Especially, the content of heavy metal in the fiber, the main product of cotton, is obviously negligible. In brief, cotton as a fiber crop can be a promising candidate for phytoremediation of contaminated soils with heavy metals, which could minimize the risk of human food chain contamination and benefit in ecological and socioeconomic terms.

KEYWORDS:

• Cotton
• heavy metal
• contaminated soil
• tolerance
• phytoremediation

Additional information

Funding

This research was granted by the Major Science and Technology Project to Create New Crop Cultivars using Gene Transfer Technology [2016ZX08005001-009];the President Youth Innovation Fund of Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences [17B0133]; and the Group Project of Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences [18C0731].