CUERE: Plants as Biomonitors of Subsurface Contaminantion

Abstract

Plants utilize a specialized system of roots to obtain water and nutrients from the subsurface. Through these roots, plants acquire a variety of organic and inorganic chemicals, including many xenobiotics and environmental contaminants. Because of these traits, plants have been widely applied to clean up contaminated groundwater and soil (i.e., phytoremediation). More recently, trees have been sampled as indicators of contaminated groundwater (i.e., phytoforensics). Phytoforensics is a minimally invasive, rapid, low cost approach to characterize contaminated sites. Advances in phytoforensics includes analytical techniques such as portable GC-MS and in planta solid-phase microextraction (SPME). Plants are also able to acquire numerous emerging contaminants through a root system that shares functional similarities with the human intestine. This seminar will highlight advances in the field of phytoforensics, present case studies, and describe how plants interact with a variety of organic contaminants.