Inventing a plant that can suck chemicals from the ground?

K

kwhilborn

Banned
Banned
Farming without the use of pesticides is almost futile. There are weeds, insects, and wildlife that can affect your crop.

Even organic farms use chemicals, and in some cases experimental chemicals. Some of these chemicals are washed away or naturally dissipate.

OKay.. Here is the point.

Some of the ground chemicals are absorbed into the food. I am not sure in what quantities, as I have not looked at reports on the levels of contamination in normal crops aside to know that chemicals (above background) are assimilated in the foods we eat.

This made me think.

Ontario has it easy because pesticides are our only concern, but in farming communities laden with oil wells the farms and grass/hay are being contaminated by these fossil fuels.

Fracking a single well requires up to 7 million gallons of water, plus an additional 400,000 gallons of additives, including lubricants, biocides, scale and rust inhibitors, solvents, foaming and defoaming agents, emulsifiers and de-emulsifiers, stabilizers and breakers. About 70 percent of the liquid that goes down a borehole eventually comes up—now further tainted with such deep-earth compounds as sodium, chloride, bromide, arsenic, barium, uranium, radium and radon. (These substances occur naturally, but many of them can cause illness if ingested or inhaled over time.) This super-salty “produced” water, or brine, can be stored on-site for reuse. Depending on state regulations, it can also be held in plastic-lined pits until it evaporates, is injected back into the earth, or gets hauled to municipal wastewater treatment plants, which aren’t designed to neutralize or sequester fracking chemicals (in other words, they’re discharged with effluent into nearby streams - See more at: http://www.thenation.com/article/171504/fracking-our-food-supply#sthash.y23qn2jS.dpuf
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Even fertilizers can overwhelm the land and surrounding water (streams, wells, lakes) with Nitrate. Some of the more damaging pesticide chemicals are aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, mirex, and toxaphene, etc.


I am just throwing this idea out there, and not sure if it is practical.

I know very little about Genetic Engineering, but I think with some research, trial and error and constant testing we could find some plants that absorb more chemicals from the soil than others. I think maybe it would be possible to invent a plant that leeches chemicals from the ground. Maybe certain root types might be better, etc.

Is this idea ridiculous?

Has it been tried?

Is it impractical. I mean if you needed to plant this leech plant for 10 years in a row to show marginal decreases in problem chemistry it would be no good. We would need a plant that seemed to thrived off chemicals. Maybe the size of the plant would also be a huge consideration.

This plant would need to likely grow like a weed in itself to stave off other weeds and the use of any pesticide or even fertilizers on this plant would obviously be counterproductive.

The overall effect would be that by replacing your crop in one field as part of a natural rotation cycle you would grow a plant that loved chemicals and grew well unsupervised. At the end of the season you harvest these plants and dispose of them in a safe manner. This coupled with an entire season of no chemical additives and plenty of rainfall or irrigation would ideally help replenish the soil by removing some toxins. Add in some fertilizer and loam the following year and it is good for another set of cycles.

This idea occurred to me while I was commenting on another thread. I have not looked into it so maybe it is someone else's idea I have thought was my own.

With enough breeding and DNA manipulation could this product be viable? We already know food grown in environments where chemicals are higher than the background average produce plants higher in chemical content so we know it is plausible.

Any Genetic gardeners out there want to invent a billion dollar plant? Send me a case of beer if you are successful.
 
kwhilborn said:
Is this idea ridiculous?

Has it been tried?

Is it impractical.
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Several types of mushroom do this, including oyster mushrooms (dont know the real name). There is info on the web about this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoremediation

There are naturally occurring microbes that eat oil, well, eat various components of oil; plus the chemical reactions that occur.

from link below said:
Within the plume the microorganism counts are consistent with the conceptualmodel of sequential aerobic, Mn/Fe reduction, and methanogenesis degradation sequence. There are 104-105 iron-reducers per gram in the contaminated aquifer compared to none detected in the uncontaminated background area. Similarly there are 102 methanogens per gram in the plume and none detected in the background area. This result is similar to that of Godsy and others (1992) who reported a 100-fold increase in methanogens within a creosote plume.

In general, greater numbers of microorganisms were found closer to the oil body and in the upper half of the plume. Denitrifiers and sulfate reducers are present in lower numbers than all other types of microbes, in accordance with the low availability of nitrate and sulfate in the ground water.
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http://mn.water.usgs.gov/projects/bemidji/results/fact-sheet.pdf

Additionally, MN has been cleaning up improperly dumped transformer oil (pcb contamination) areas across the state (via electric companies and pre-clean air/clean water act). They do not know what microbe(s) it is (at least as of year 2000) but in site after site they tested, knowing how much oil was dumped, the pcb numbers did not match expectations, including sites where it was undetectable. The older the dump site, the less contaminates were found, with 60 years sticking in my head as approximate time to undetected.

There are websites with commercial sales of microbe packets for oil spills. Some of these give good insight into best practices for ensuring your microbes seed well and how to maintain the organic process.
 
i made the prediction about 10 years ago that they will be able to extract gold from the ground by engineered organisms.
these engineered organisms will most likely resemble a mass of jello but it's hard telling what form they will ultimately take.
i also predicted that an organic filter will be developed that will render smokestack fumes 100% safe and breathable.
it's my opinion that the industrial uses of these "GMO" will provide the impetus for full blown development.
 
All plants absorb chemicals from the soil and water. You're looking for a plant that does this selectively - ie takes up cadmium, while leaving potassium behind for food plants - for unwanted chemicals. It would have to be a variety of different plants for the different toxic chemicals industry has been dumping for two centuries. Suppose you succeed. Now you have to harvest a shitload of toxic plants. Who wants to do this? Migrants? Illegals? Meanwhile, how do you keep livestock and wildlife from being poisoned by the plants?
and dispose of them in a safe manner.
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How? Where? How much and how often? Who pays for the disposal equipment and transport?

Farming without the use of pesticides is almost futile. There are weeds, insects, and wildlife that can affect your crop.
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This, by the way, is inaccurate. We managed to overpopulate an entire planet before anybody used pesticides on crops, and organic methods have done very well in modern times, yielding better as well as healthier crops than the dead soil of industrial farms.

Even organic farms use chemicals, and in some cases experimental chemicals.
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That, by definition, would instantly lose them organic certification. Maybe not in the US - they have some kinky legislation there. And, come to think of it, maybe organic has already lost its meaning under the Harper regime, too. Labeling still doesn't make it true.
 
I think it's a cool idea that thinks outside the box, but I have two criticisms with it

-toxic plants may be more harmful to the overall environment. its fine if pesticides and even natural chemicals are spread out evenly throughout the soil, but if its sucked up and solely concentrated in these toxic plants, then bugs/animals that might come into contact with these plants will get large doses of toxicity - considering these plants would be weeds, they would spread easily to neighboring areas and be very resistant to dying, so introducing a species of toxic plants to an ecosystem might work its way up the food chain and may be hard to contain it in only crop areas

-in terms of cost-effectiveness, it would need to prove to have beneficial effects to increase crop yield to have the potential millions of dollars invested in R&D of this plant. considering this plant would require its own space and time in the crop cycle, require dispersal, maintenance and disposal, it'd be hard to see the potential cost-benefit, unless the plant chemistry also had a secondary function, possibly intake harmful chemicals and then metabolize it into a less harmful analogue

In terms of making a plant like this, not only would it have to selectively extract pesticide chemicals from the soil, but it'd need to survive with its load of chemicals. but I can see this as a possibility
 
leopold said:
i made the prediction about 10 years ago that they will be able to extract gold from the ground by engineered organisms.
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That would work - if gold were water soluble. But it's not.

One thing to remember is that no organism can "suck" things out of the dirt. All they can do is allow the molecule (dissolved in water) into their roots - then not allow it out again. It works by diffusion, not by any process whereby roots reach out and take stuff out of the soil. So any such system must rely on the basic (i.e. slow) processes of diffusion and mass transport. On the plus side, they are implacable; as long as there's water in the soil, and as long as the molecule is water soluble, such diffusion will go on forever.
 
billvon said:
That would work - if gold were water soluble. But it's not.

One thing to remember is that no organism can "suck" things out of the dirt. All they can do is allow the molecule (dissolved in water) into their roots - then not allow it out again. It works by diffusion, not by any process whereby roots reach out and take stuff out of the soil. So any such system must rely on the basic (i.e. slow) processes of diffusion and mass transport. On the plus side, they are implacable; as long as there's water in the soil, and as long as the molecule is water soluble, such diffusion will go on forever.
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Take lattice it absorbs heavy metals Cadmium is one of them It have been shown by water reclamation plants
 
@ Billvon,
I used the term suck as a metaphor. I also have not seen any sucking plants, although poison Ivy sucks.

Since you are mentioning diffusion though, would there be any way to make the plant more receptive. Would soggy ground be better, etc. More root coverage seems necessary simply to reach more chemicals.

If we used pesticides that are not water soluble would it keep them out of the food we grow? That could be an idea on its own. Develop pesticides that cannot be ingested by plants.

@ Milkweed,
I knew that Microbes were used in some clean up operations. I was a Soil Engineer and have never witnessed this method being used but was aware there are some companies that work to neutralize and absorb ground chemicals. The company I worked for offered no such solutions and on most occasions the offending soil was dug up and hauled away.

As far as removing the then Toxic Plants. I was assuming they could be taken and turned into oil possibly, or at least removed from where we grow our food.

Thanks for the mushroom idea, and the links. They are good reading for this topic.

@ Jeeves,
I agree we could grow without pesticides, but crops lose up to 40% of their yield sometimes without them and could not compete. You are correct that if legislated we could bypass this use but pay double (or more) for the cost for fruits and vegetables.

You would need to fence in the crops, and possibly convert them to oil for gasoline or at least remove from ground where we grow foods.


@ Rodereve,
I think you would need to start with testing to see what plants absorb what chemicals naturally, and possibly work on hybrids based on that research.
 
I think the problem is how do you make a living while you are growing weeds? You could grow a crop that isn't eaten, like cotton.
 
Actually Spidergoat solution is better than my concept with this thread rendering it useless.

If people simply substitute their crops for a few years with something like cotton then we would not be ingesting any chemicals the cotton may absorb. You could cycle this for a few years.

It would be nice if you could design a cotton hybrid that was a more chemical loving strain, but the overall idea is good.

So instead of always growing food, find a crop like cotton or "Hemp" (nudge wink), and do not feed it pesticides or fertilizer. This would in theory aid the problem of chemicals growing in our food.
 
billvon said:
That would work - if gold were water soluble. But it's not.
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there are a lot of elements that aren't water soluble, they get incorporated into cells anyway.
besides, it could work both ways.
disolve or incorporate the gold, or dissolve everything else.
it might even "manufacture" the gold into sheets for you.
remember, with the unknown ANYTHING is possible.
 
If people simply substitute their crops for a few years with something like cotton then we would not be ingesting any chemicals the cotton may absorb. You could cycle this for a few years.
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How much is toxic cotton going to be worth? Who will want to diaper their babies with it? That's assuming it would even grow any farther north than Alabama. Hemp will, but it would have to be made into rope and sails and painter's canvas, rather than clothing. With all the rotation and fencing and shipping, though....
....wouldn't it be cheaper just to stop dumping all the crap?
 
Jeeves said:
How much is toxic cotton going to be worth? Who will want to diaper their babies with it? That's assuming it would even grow any farther north than Alabama. Hemp will, but it would have to be made into rope and sails and painter's canvas, rather than clothing. With all the rotation and fencing and shipping, though....
....wouldn't it be cheaper just to stop dumping all the crap?
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You can just wash it. Anyway, I was thinking of cotton, because most of the arsenic contamination in US farmland is due to it's use in cotton farming for decades. Now much of that land is being used for rice, which is now contaminated by arsenic. But they still sell it.
 
I would not care if my jeans had herbicides in them. I still like the other than food option best.

I was not aware cotton left arsenic, and that would be bad. Yes. We do not grow cotton in Canada.

There must be other options than hemp? Hemp however has a vast array of products that can be made from it, just ask Woody Harrelson.

hemp-uses.jpg


I knew it was great substitute for trees when making paper, and have seen a documentary profiling its wondrous wide range of uses. It is a marvel of nature despite its use as a drug.

NOTE: add cupcakes to list on poster. :m: :wave: :m:
 
How about just using those toxic plants towards manufacture of new fertilizer/pesticide products?

Instead of trying to use them for household products lol
 
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Jeeves said:
You can just wash it?
What, like in the water that goes down the drain? How did the toxic crap get into the soil the first time around?
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Deliberate application to the soil. Arsenic for cotton farming has been going on for a century or more.
 
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