AsianScientist (May 12, 2014) – Scientists from the University of the Philippines, Los Baños have discovered a new plant species with an unusual lifestyle — it eats nickel for a living — accumulating up to 18,000 ppm of the metal in its leaves without itself being poisoned.
The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.
The new species is called Rinorea niccolifera, reflecting its ability to absorb nickel in very high amounts. Nickel hyperaccumulation is a rare phenomenon; only about 450 species are known to possess this unusual trait out of the estimated 300,000 species of vascular plants.
Rinorea niccolifera was discovered on the western part of Luzon Island in the Philippines, an area known for soils rich in heavy metals.
“Hyperacccumulator plants have great potential for the development of green technologies, for example, ‘phytoremediation’ and ‘phytomining'”, explains Dr. Augustine Doronila of the University of Melbourne, co-author of the study.
Phytoremediation refers to the use of hyperacccumulator plants to remove heavy metals in contaminated soil. Phytomining, on the other hand, is the use of hyperacccumulator plants to grow and harvest in order to recover commercially valuable metals in plant shoots from metal-rich sites.
The article can be found at: Fernando et al. (2014) Rinorea niccolifera (Violaceae), a new, nickel-hyperaccumulating species from Luzon Island, Philippines.
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Source: Pensoft Publishers.
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