Page 207 - Plant-Based Remediation Processes

Chapter 11
Flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) and Hemp
(Cannabis sativa L.) as Fibre Crops for
Phytoextraction of Heavy Metals: Biological,

Agro-technological and Economical
Point of View

Miroslav Griga and Marie Bjelkova ´

11.1 Introduction

The technology of heavy metals (HMs) phytoextraction from the polluted soils
should include several components in order to be exploitable and cost efficient.
First one is a biological component, which represents available plant species
exhibiting high/good HMs accumulation and tolerance. Such candidate species
should produce high above-ground biomass and the metal element of interest
should be easily transported from roots to above-ground harvestable organs. From
the genetic point of view, the culture crops have advantage (as compared to wild
species) that they represent genetically homogenous and stable populations (clone,
line and variety) with optimised growth and development parameters provided by
breeding process. Second one is a technological component, which involves com-
plex technology of growing, integrated plant protection and harvest (using efficient
field machinery), and regulation of HMs bioavailability and uptake by proper
agrotechnological treatments. The very important point is the possibility of further
industrial processing of HMs-contaminated biomass. Finally, third one is an
economical component which includes cost of phytoextraction, time of phyto-
extraction (cleaning of particular site to desired/acceptable level of metal element),
cost of handling with HMs-contaminated biomass, and reduction of overall costs of
phytoremediation process by production of added value products from HMs-
contaminated biomass. If one component of the scheme suffers from some
shortcomings/limits, it should be compensated by advantages of other components.

M. Griga (*)
Plant Biotechnology Department, AGRITEC Plant Research Ltd., Zeme ˇde ˇlska ´ 16, 787 01
ˇ
Sumperk, Czech Republic
e-mail: griga@agritec.cz
M. Bjelkova ´
ˇ
Department of Industrial Crops, AGRITEC Plant Research Ltd., Zeme ˇde ˇlska ´ 16, 787 01 Sumperk,
Czech Republic

D.K. Gupta (ed.), Plant-Based Remediation Processes, Soil Biology 35, 199
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-35564-6_11, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013