Genetically engineered grass cleanses soil of toxic pollutants left by military explosives

Kentucky bluegrass, Fescue, Rye and Bent, etc
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ronfitch
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Genetically engineered grass cleanses soil of toxic pollutants left by military explosives

Post by ronfitch » May 7th, 2021, 3:37 pm

Not sure where to post this, but since it is University of Washington, I am going with cool-season grasses:

"Large swaths of U.S. military land are covered with munitions components, including the explosive chemical RDX. This molecule is toxic to people and can cause cancer. It also doesn’t naturally break down and can contaminate groundwater.

Now researchers have genetically engineered a grass commonly used to fight soil erosion so that it can remove RDX from the soil, according to a new paper published May 3 in Nature Biotechnology."

Entire read:
https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/05 ... x-in-soil/

Wonder if anyone has mentioned Poa Triv to these folks ....

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MorpheusPA
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Re: Genetically engineered grass cleanses soil of toxic pollutants left by military explosives

Post by MorpheusPA » May 7th, 2021, 5:44 pm

Neat! Sunflowers have been used for other chemicals (heavy metals) because they naturally concentrate them in their tissues and throw deep, wide root systems. The sunflowers are then removed, burned, and the char treated as hazardous waste. The soil, after some generations, becomes much less contaminated.

edslawn
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Re: Genetically engineered grass cleanses soil of toxic pollutants left by military explosives

Post by edslawn » May 10th, 2021, 9:23 pm

MorpheusPA wrote:
May 7th, 2021, 5:44 pm
Neat! Sunflowers have been used for other chemicals (heavy metals) because they naturally concentrate them in their tissues and throw deep, wide root systems. The sunflowers are then removed, burned, and the char treated as hazardous waste. The soil, after some generations, becomes much less contaminated.
Morpheus, what in the world did you do to accumulate all of this knowledge? Holy cow... :D

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MorpheusPA
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Re: Genetically engineered grass cleanses soil of toxic pollutants left by military explosives

Post by MorpheusPA » May 11th, 2021, 5:41 pm

edslawn wrote:
May 10th, 2021, 9:23 pm
Morpheus, what in the world did you do to accumulate all of this knowledge? Holy cow... :D
If I gave you the honest answer to this, you'd call me a four-letter epithet I completely deserved in my twenties and thirties. Late teens, too.

Honest answer, toned down for the site? I...spent some time....with a toxic waste engineer. Since one can't spend all one's time doing one single thing, I did get some background in toxic waste handling. I was most interested in the more natural and biological methods of waste handling. But I do remember some of the points of substoichiometric pyrolysis of toxic soils.

I also have a really good memory.

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