ABSTRACT
Phytoextraction is defined as the use of green plants to concentrate pollutants from the soil into the harvestable above-ground biomass. Several comprehensive reviews have been written that summarize many important aspects of this novel plant-based technology [1]. The basic idea that plants can be used for environmental remediation is very old and cannot be traced to any particular source. However, the convergence, in the 1980s and early 1990s, of work on plant metal tolerance [2-4] and plant metal hyperaccumulation [5 -9] led directly to the realization that plants could be used to phytoextract pollutant metals from the soil [10-14].
