Decontaminating Soils with Mother Nature’s Help

Decontaminating Soils with Mother Nature’s Help

Montreal researchers Franz Lang and Mohamed Hijri are thrilled with their recent discovery. They may just have found a way to clean up the contaminated sites of the entire planet! How do they plan on achieving this remarkable goal? By combining plants, mushrooms and bacteria! It’s a new green technology called bioremediation and its potential has yet to be fully unlocked

Mother Nature Lending a Hand with Soil Decontamination

Mining operations, oil and gas extraction, agriculture and manufacturing activities all contaminate soils the world over. Unfortunately current decontamination methods are not only expensive but also environmentally unsound. Bioremediation could soon change all of that.

1 + 2 + 3 = Bioremediation

Bioremediation refers to a range of methods used to clean up polluted soil, water and even air, through the careful combination of various factors. It generally involves interaction among: 1) plants 2) the soil and 3) microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) The soil provides the environment for plants and microorganisms to grow. These microorganisms feed on the pollutants, break them down and eventually eliminate them. Microbes therefore play an important role in accelerating the decontamination process.

Bioremediation, a green solution

Researchers Franz Lang, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics and professor of Biochemistry at Université de Montréal, and Mohamed Hijri professor of Biological Sciences at the same university, have been hard at work studying bioremediation, an emerging biotechnology that uses plants and microorganisms to decontaminate soils.

At the moment, the researchers are working on sequencing the genome of certain microbes to determine which bacteria and mushrooms are best for the job of soil decontamination. They are also trying to identify the optimal plant-mushroom-bacteria combinations that will make the decontamination process even more efficient.

The tremendous economic potential of bioremediation

Bioremediation offers tremendous potential for the Canadian economy, since it is much more affordable than traditional decontamination methods, such as excavation. “Right now, it costs several million dollars to decontaminate a single hectare of land. With our new technology, all you have to do is plant some trees, water them and wait for nature to do its job,” explained Mohamed Hijri during an interview on Radio Canada International.

“Our tree of choice is the willow, since it lives in intimate symbiosis with the many microbes in the soil. It’s a “pioneer” species that grows rapidly in harsh climates and in poor, even polluted, soil. The decontamination protocols we’re working on right now will be more effective than existing methods, because they will rely on the use of optimized microbes that interact with plants. They will be more cost-effective and more readily applicable for commercial use by biotechnology companies,” explained Franz Lang, the driving force behind this major scientific initiative.

The global soil decontamination market is obviously huge, since both industrialized and developing countries have a need for this type of technology.