ABSTRACT
Different industries and human activities have introduced pollutants into the environment. Heavy metals (HMs) are among those contaminants which are highly toxic to all forms of life. When they are in the soil, they can either leach down to the water table or remain in the earth. This is where they join the food chain, which affects all forms of life and disrupts ecosystems. Phytoextraction of pollutants from metals can recuperate fertility of the soil as well as provide low-cost biorefinery feedstock. The literature related to the title, i.e., Helianthus annuus was exaggerated by a search using the keywords like H. annuus, sunflower, bioremediation, phytoremediation, bioaccumulation of sunflower in ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed databases. Publications’ sites were also queried, i.e., Elsevier, Taylor, and Francis, Springer, and also dissertation search engines. This chapter suggests that this plant species exhibits enormous advantages, but further emphasizes the up-to-date knowledge of its superior uses in phytoremediation of multi-pollutants like hydrocarbons, HMs, and other dangerous pollutants. Different mechanisms are known for the absorption and transport of HMs within the plant body via metal binding proteins, such as metallotheiones, phytochelatins, and antioxidant enzymes, which increase metal accumulation. Phytoremediation has appeared as an emerging technology to be deployed at commercial scale to manage HM contaminated lands. This technology involves only the expense of cultivating and produces a great amount of energy by incineration. Soil remediation is completed through a framework of cultivated plants for metal absorption.
