A 10-year UF horticultural and agricultural study made an impressive step in the effort of environmental crop cleanup last month.
UF faculty in both the horticultural sciences department and the soil and water science department, along with the help of graduate assistants, discovered the environmental benefits of the Chinese brake fern.
The team found that the Chinese brake fern, along with bacteria added around the roots of the plant, help boost the fern's growth and absorb arsenic and carcinogens from the soil by storing the toxins in the fern.
"The Chinese brake fern is a natural bio-accumulator," said Bala Rathinasabapathi, an associate professor of stress physiology in the horticultural sciences department at UF. "It remediates soils contaminated with arsenic."
The exotic plant is native to China and can be found in southeastern states such as Florida, Georgia and Louisiana, according to the UF Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants.
The fern does not identify arsenic as a toxic substance but as a phosphate instead, causing the plant to absorb the toxin into itself.
High levels of arsenic were discovered in residential areas of Gainesville, which is difficult for producing crop plants, according to an October UF News release.
Rathinasabapathi worked with Lena Ma, a UF soil and water sciences professor, and graduate students on the study. There were some dangerous aspects of the project though. Working with arsenic and other carcinogens can potentially cause health problems.
"Any amount of arsenic is bad because it is cancer-causing," Rathinasabapathi said. "But we can tolerate arsenic to a certain point."
Since discovering positive side effects of introducing bacteria and the Chinese brake fern into contaminated soil, further research will be conducted.
As of now, the Chinese brake fern has not been used for environmental cleanups, but the team hopes the government will use it more in the near future, said Piyasa Ghosh, a graduate assistant in the Institute of Agricultural Sciences.
"The plant is not being used properly," Ghosh said. "We are always trying to use this fern for practical purposes. We would like for the government to be more pro-active for applying these kind of emerging technologies."
