New plant varieties help improve soil

By traditional breeding methods, city scientists in Siberia and Russia created fast-growing plant varieties capable of decontaminating soil.

According to the plan, populus (Populus) , which has been studied to grow twice as fast as other varieties, will be grown on the ground of old plants to clean up contaminated soil and heavy metals. .

Photo: bomengids.nl

Deputy director of the Siberia Plant Biochemistry Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Viktor Voronin, said the contaminated soil on the surface could be cleaned with different grasses, but the new plant variety would be easy. absorb toxic substances such as arsenic, penetrate deep in the ground 6 meters.

These toxins will pass easily to the leaves and in the fall people only have to remove the leaves and bury them as hazardous waste. Test results in some areas have resulted in clean and safe soil. So far, fast growing poplar trees have been grown in many old defense factories.

Meanwhile, with the help of genetics, scientists at the Research Center in the town of Pushchino on the outskirts of Moscow, also created new crop varieties that could become the ideal biological tools for soil decontamination.

However, currently in Russia genetically modified plants are still banned and controversial, so they are not yet allowed to grow in popularity.