The arsenic tolerance of plant species: Arsenic accumulation and transport

There is a naturally occurring source of arsenic in the environment due to anthropogenic and geological processes (Zhao et al., 2010). It is estimated that millions of people around the world, particularly in South East Asia, have been poisoned by As polluted ground water and food (Kile et al., 2007, Zhu et al., 2008; Pal et al., 2009). There is increasing interest in Phytoremediation, a plant-based green method that can be used to clean up As-contaminated soil and water (Kertulis –Tartar and Yong, 2010). It is possible to harvest and remove the toxins from a contaminated location by harvesting plant tissues that have accumulated the contaminants. In order to ingest arsenic from the soil, plants use phosphate uptake pathways, i.e., apoplastic or symplastic mechanisms (shoots and leaves). The effectiveness of a plant's phytoremediation process can be gauged by measuring the quantity of arsenic that moves from the roots to the shoots