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Abiotic Stress Responses in Plants pp 451–463Cite as

Phytoremediation of Low Levels of Heavy Metals Using Duckweed (Lemna minor)

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Abstract

The treatment of waste waters by bioremediation is nowadays an interesting approach due to low cost, simplicity, and the quality of being more environment friendly as compared to other remediation techniques. Certain plants as Lemna minor are able to remove heavy metals from contaminated waters. The removal efficiency of this plant was evaluated with different experiments for the contaminants arsenic, mercury, lead, chromium, ­copper, and zinc. The elements were monitored in water as function of time during a period of 15–25 days, for the experiments using plants, in contaminated waters and controls, with and without plants. The foliar ­tissues were also analyzed to determine the mass of contaminant accumulated by the specie. The removal efficiency varied from 3 to 30% depending on the element. The contaminants did not affect significantly the agronomical behavior of the Lemna minor at the levels used in the experiments (low levels). The plant is well-suited for the phytoremediation in particular ­mercury phytoremediation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the CDCHT-UCLA for the financial support of this research under the project REG-001-2007 and the IAEA project ARCAL RLA 010.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dpto. de Química y Suelos, Universidad Centroccidental Lisandro Alvarado, Cabudare, Venezuela

    Lué-Merú Marcó Parra, Gosmyr Torres, Adolfo David Arenas, Erick Sánchez & Korina Rodríguez

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  1. Lué-Merú Marcó Parra
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  2. Gosmyr Torres
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  3. Adolfo David Arenas
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  4. Erick Sánchez
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  5. Korina Rodríguez
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Correspondence to Lué-Merú Marcó Parra .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Botany, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, 190008, India

    Parvaiz Ahmad

  2. , Department of Plant Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, 500046, India

    M.N.V. Prasad

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Parra, LM.M., Torres, G., Arenas, A.D., Sánchez, E., Rodríguez, K. (2012). Phytoremediation of Low Levels of Heavy Metals Using Duckweed (Lemna minor). In: Ahmad, P., Prasad, M. (eds) Abiotic Stress Responses in Plants. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0634-1_24

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