Bioaccumulator and Phytoremediation Potential Evaluation of Aerial Part of Montrichardia linifera (Arruda) Schott

Abstract

The environmental pollution caused by heavy metal has increased of the advance of industrial and agricultural activities. Among the techniques of contaminated environments treatment, phytoremediation stands out for having efficient, cheap and harmless method Researches of Montrichardia linifera, an aquatic macrophyte found extensively on the banks of Amazonian rivers, show that the plant absorbs high concentrations of manganese, which may be indicative of plant bioaccumulation of this metal. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the potential bioaccumulator and phytoremediate of the aerial part of M. linifera comparing the contents of metals found in the plant with those found in the soil. The samples of leaf, petiole, stem and soil were collected in the aningal of the campus of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi and determined the Ca 2+ , Mg 2+ , Cu 2+ , Fe 3+ , Zn 2+ , Mn 2+ , Ni 2+ , Co 3+ , Cd 2+ and Pb 2+ flame atomic absorption spectrometer. M. linifera presented high bioaccumulation of almost all the analyzed metals, mainly manganese in the leaves (149.11 μg g-1) and zinc in the petiole (10.36 mg g-1) with about 16.5 and 10.7 times, respectively, the concentration present in the soil. The results show that the plant accumulates large amounts of manganese, zinc, cadmium and copper in its aerial part, with contents well above that available in the soil, thus possessing great potential for application in the phytoremediation of environments contaminated by these metals.