II. International Conference on Sustainable Devolopment, Skopje, Macedonia, 19 - 23 October 2016, pp.1
Environmental pollution due to human activities in industrial and mining areas started to be a big global problem. Heavy metals, pesticides, organic and radioactive wastes are among the leading polluters and occupy an important place. Because of the complexity of relations among parameters and differences of pollutants, it becomes difficult to clean these areas by physical and chemical methods.
Phytoremediation is an environmentally friendly and low cost biotechnological method using plants for immobilization and degradation of contaminants in polluted areas. Choose of ideal plant species and appropriate enhancing criteria are the most important requirements for obtaining high efficiency remediation and beneficial biomass.
The popularity of sorghum is increasing every day due to its widespread use in bioethanol production and animal feed as well as its adaptability to dry and salty areas, compatibility to low input agricultural fields, availability as basic food for more than 500,000 people, and use as supplementary product for treatment of various diseases. In addition, sorghum can also be used in phytoremediation of contaminated areas owing to its heavy metal accumulating property. It has been proven that sorghum accumulates more heavy metal in tissues when compared with most plants known as tolerant. Extremely low transfer of heavy metals to grain by keeping them in root and leaf is a superior property of sorghum. In this respect, the grains can safely be used both as human and animal feed. In the present study, phytoremediation potential of sorghum plant in eliminating the heavy metals in multiple-heavy metal contaminated areas was discussed.