Experimental study for recovery of heavy metals from contaminated soil using arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

Soil micro-organisms, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, can provide beneficial symbiosis to their host plants and have been adopted to recover metal-polluted soils. This study investigates the removal of heavy metals from soil using phytoremediation in the presence of fungi. The results indicate that the sunflower plant illustrates the highest copper accumulation, with 18.55 mg/kg. In contrast, sunflower and sorghum controls (non-microorganisms) showed weak capability to transfer copper through plant biomass, with 0.91 mg/kg and 0.97 mg/kg, respectively. Both plants demonstrated that phytoremediation can be a promising approach to providing sustainable solutions for soil heavy metal contamination in the presence of fungi.