THE PCA OF PHYTOMINING: PRINCIPLES, CHALLENGES AND ADVANCES

There is a number of commercially valuable elements whose concentration in the crust of
the earth is too low for an economic mining with traditional approaches. However,
phytotechnologies which take advantage of the capacity of certain plant species to take up these
elements from the soil solution and accumulate them to large amounts in their biomass can be used
for an economic winning of various metals and metalloids. This specific use of phytoextraction
which has already been as one technology in the phytoremediation of contaminated sites is called
“phytomining”.