Oats to clean contaminated soil

Researchers from China, Switzerland and Australia have investigated 26 cultivars of wheat, husk oat, naked oat and barley for their potential use as a tool to clean up strontium from soils after a nuclear accident. Using plants to remove metals and organic pollutants from the environment is an emerging technology known as phytoremediation.

Study co-author Hackett Professor Kadambot Siddique, from The University of Western Australia’s Institute of Agriculture, said exposure to radioactive strontium after nuclear power plant accidents could directly endanger human health, especially if it entered the food chain. He explained, “Food is the most important pathway of strontium into humans, and high doses of strontium increases the risk of cancers and may induce skeletal abnormalities.

The process of phytoextraction, explained Professor Siddique, utilises plants which “take up contaminants [from the soil] and accumulate them to elevated levels in the shoots. The plants are then safely disposed of.”

Writing in the International Journal of Phytoremediation, the team said they studied 26 species known to have higher accumulation of heavy metals, quantifying the influence, uptake and translocation of strontium on growth of the plants. At maturity, the naked oat cultivar Neimengkeyimai-1 - a cereal crop with edible seeds in the oat genus Avena - had the highest strontium content at all measured strontium levels.

“The percentage of strontium removed from the soil to the shoots at harvest time was more than 1.4% after 120 days,” said Professor Siddique. “Naked oat plants could be selected for phytoremediation to clean up contaminated soil, and Neimengkeyimai-1 in particular could be used as a model for further research, as a starting point for finding more effective cultivars.”