Metal hyperaccumulator plants can be employed to aide in environmental clean-up efforts by uptaking heavy metals such as lead and arsenic from contaminated soil or water.  In this project, the amount of heavy metal uptake by plants grown in agar media was measured by X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF).  Using modified agar as the growth medium eliminated some issues involved in growing and analyzing plants in soil, such as, microbial degradation and sampling problems.  It also allowed the XRF to be run under vacuum conditions increasing sensitivity.  Compared to other analytical techniques, the XRF allowed multi-element analysis, recovery of the sample, and analysis of the plant parts directly (roots, stems, and leaves) to determine the location of metal accumulation.  The developed method to grow the plants from seed, in a metal-containing agar medium, will be validated and quantitative results presented.  One of the main goals of this project is to develop an environmental chemistry experiment suitable for undergraduate chemistry majors.

Determination of heavy metal uptake in plants grown in agar by X-ray fluorescence (XRF)

255th National Meeting (2018)

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