Title: Experimental study for recovery of heavy metals from contaminated soil using arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

Authors: Bulent Budak; Turgut T. Onay; Aysegul Yagmur Goren; Ali Khalvati

Addresses: Faculty of Agriculture, Odemis Vocational Training School, Ege University, Odemis, 35750, Izmir, Turkey ' Institute of Environmental Sciences, Bogazici University, Bebek 3432 Istanbul, Turkey ' Izmir Institute of Technology, Environmental Science and Engineering, Urla, Izmir, Turkey; Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Ontario Tech University, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario L1H 7K4, Canada ' Viona Consulting Inc., Agro-Environmental Federal Company, Associated with Ontario Tech University, Thornhill, L3Y5Y1, Toronto, Canada

Abstract: Soil micro-organisms like arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can provide beneficial symbiosis to their host plant and have been adopted to recover metal-polluted soils. This study investigates the removal of heavy metals from soil using phytoremediation in the presence of fungi. The results indicate that the sunflower plant illustrates the highest copper accumulation, with 18.55 mg/kg. In contrast, sunflower and sorghum controls (non-microorganisms) showed weak capability to transfer copper through plant biomass with 0.91 and 0.97 mg/kg, respectively. Both plants showed that phytoremediation can be a promising approach to providing sustainable solutions for soil heavy metal contamination in the presence of fungi.

Keywords: phytoremediation; rare earth element recovery; living organic; sorghum; rhisosphere.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2025.143850

International Journal of Global Warming, 2025 Vol.35 No.1, pp.1 - 15

Received: 24 Sep 2024
Accepted: 05 Oct 2024
Published online: 10 Jan 2025 *

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