Antenozio et al. 2021 — Pteris vittata phytoextraction on As-rich soil and As-resistant rhizosphere bacteria

This study evaluated arsenic phytoextraction by the fern Pteris vittata grown on a naturally arsenic-rich volcanic soil from the Viterbo area of central Italy, and characterized the arsenic-resistant bacteria of its rhizosphere. It is upstream mechanism evidence on the soil-to-plant transfer of arsenic and its microbial modulation; it reports no occurrence of arsenic in food, ingredients, or consumer products and is context-only for Heavy Metal Index purposes.

Key numbers

• The calcareous source soil had an average arsenic concentration of 750 mg/kg, of which 28% was bioavailable.
• Arsenic was detected in P. vittata fronds (by µ-XRF) after just 10 days of growth; frond arsenic reached 5,000 mg/kg (by ICP-OES) after 5.5 months.
• Sixteen arsenate-tolerant bacterial strains were isolated from the rhizosphere, most in the genus Bacillus; six isolates were highly As-resistant (>100 mM), and five carried the arsenate reductase gene (arsC).

Methods (brief)

Cultivation of P. vittata on a natural As-rich soil with monitoring of frond arsenic by micro-energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (µ-XRF) and ICP-OES, plus isolation and molecular/biochemical characterization of rhizosphere bacterial strains (As resistance, arsenate reduction, IAA and siderophore production).

Implications

Certification: Contributes nothing to HMT&C threshold pools. It is mechanism evidence on arsenic mobility from soil into a hyperaccumulating plant and the rhizosphere microbiology that supports it; route as exposure/mechanism context to Soil-to-plant transfer of heavy metals, Arsenic, Total, and Agronomic mitigation.

Courses: Illustrates how parent-material geology (volcanic As-rich soil) and bioavailable fraction, not total soil arsenic alone, govern uptake, and how rhizosphere bacteria modulate phytoextraction.

App: No contamination_profile blocks are touched.

Microbiome: The As-resistant rhizosphere consortium (Bacillus, Paenarthrobacter, Beijerinckia) is a WikiBiome federation signpost for soil-microbiome-metal interactions.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• Arsenic, Total
• Soil-to-plant transfer of heavy metals
• Agronomic mitigation
• Microbiome

Verification notes

• Evidence tier B: primary experimental study in a peer-reviewed journal (Scientific Reports, CC BY 4.0); not a systematic review.
• Page grounded in the published abstract and bibliographic metadata; numeric values preserved as printed. Full-text numeric extraction can follow if the cell is promoted to synthesis.
• metals: [tAs] — the source reports soil/plant total arsenic without speciating inorganic vs organic; tAs per convention.
• ingredients: [] / products: [] correct: experimental phytoextraction context, not retail food occurrence (cf. Phytoremediation of Heavy Metals in Tropical Soils an Overview).
• Part 2 direction-of-edit check: adds upstream mechanism literature; neutral to HMT&C thresholds, moves toward the literature.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.