Tag Archives: Luzon Island

Nickel-eating plant in the Philippines

For anyone interested in phytoremediation and/or phytomining, this news from the Philippines is quite exciting (from a May 9, 2014 news release on EurekAlert, Note: A link has been removed, (also on ScienceDaily),

Scientists from the University of the Philippines, Los Baños (UPLB) have discovered a new plant species with an unusual lifestyle — it eats nickel for a living — accumulating up to 18,000 ppm of the metal in its leaves without itself being poisoned, says Professor Edwino Fernando, lead author of the report. Such an amount is a hundred to a thousand times higher than in most other plants. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

The new species is called Rinorea niccolifera, reflecting its ability to absorb nickel in very high amounts. Nickel hyperaccumulation is such a rare phenomenon with only about 0.5–1% of plant species native to nickel-rich soils having been recorded to exhibit the ability. Throughout the world, only about 450 species are known with this unusual trait, which is still a small proportion of the estimated 300,000 species of vascular plants.

A May 9, 2014 Penfold Publishers news release, which originated the items elsewhere, provides more details and an image of the nickel-eating plant,

The new species, according to Dr Marilyn Quimado, one of the lead scientists of the research team, was discovered on the western part of Luzon Island in the Philippines, an area known for soils rich in heavy metals.

“Hyperacccumulator plants have great potentials for the development of green technologies, for example, ‘phytoremediation’ and ‘phytomining'”, explains Dr Augustine Doronila of the School of Chemistry, University of Melbourne, who is also co-author of the report.

Phytoremediation refers to the use of hyperacccumulator plants to remove heavy metals in contaminated soils. Phytomining, on the other hand, is the use of hyperacccumulator plants to grow and harvest in order to recover commercially valuable metals in plant shoots from metal-rich sites. [emphasis mine]

In a previous piece about phytomining and in contrast to this news release, I suggested that phytoremediation could also function as phytomining (an idea I found elsewhere), my March 5, 2013 posting. There are also a November 22, 2012 posting and a Sept. 26, 2012 posting on the topic of phyto-mining (anyone keen to read everything here on this topic, may want to search the term both with and without hyphens).

Here is the nickel-eating plant,

Caption: This photo shows the newly described metal-eating plant, Rinorea niccolifera. Credit: Dr. Edwino S. Fernando Usage Restrictions: CC-BY 4.0

Caption: This photo shows the newly described metal-eating plant, Rinorea niccolifera.
Credit: Dr. Edwino S. Fernando
Usage Restrictions: CC-BY 4.0

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Rinorea niccolifera (Violaceae), a new, nickel-hyperaccumulating species from Luzon Island, Philippines by Edwino Fernando, Marilyn Quimado, and Augustine Doronila. PhytoKeys 37: 1–13. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.37.7136

This paper is open access.

In a burst of curiosity I checked out the University of Philippines website and found some research bearing similarity to today’s (May 9, 2014) piece although in this case the metal being discussed is gold and the researchers are investigating the possibility of using bacteria to produce gold nanoparticles. From an April 16, 2014 article written by Miguel Victor T. Durian for the university’s Horizon magazine,

A pioneering nanotechnology study conducted by scientists at the UPLB National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (BIOTECH) is exploring the potentials of plantgrowth- promoting bacteria (PGPB) in the biosynthesis of nanogold.

Dr. Lilia M. Fernando, Dr. Florinia E. Merca, and Dr. Erlinda S. Paterno are looking at how nanogold could be produced in large quantities using PGPB as this could bring down medical diagnostic and treatment costs especially against a dreaded disease – cancer.

“Our study primarily aimed to find a less expensive source of gold through the biosynthesis of the element by microorganisms.” Dr. Fernando explained. “Gold costs around 200 to 300 US dollars (or about Php9,000 to Php14,000), …,” Ms. Fernando added.

Furthermore, PGPB is abundantly available in the soils of the Philippines. In fact, the researchers carried out their collection of PGPB in Tarlac and Bohol. Moreover, cultivation of PGPB does not require any special incubation procedures in order to maintain its nano-size because it can survive at room temperature. This makes the cultivation of PGPB easier and less expensive compared to other microorganisms.

I look forward to hearing more about these projects as they develop.