{"id":32131,"date":"2021-02-08T19:55:27","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T01:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=32131"},"modified":"2021-02-08T19:55:27","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T01:55:27","slug":"word-of-the-day-649","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/02\/08\/word-of-the-day-649\/","title":{"rendered":"Word Of The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phytomining<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The\u00a0planting<\/a>\u00a0(and subsequent\u00a0harvesting<\/a>) of\u00a0vegetation<\/a>\u00a0that selectively\u00a0concentrate<\/a>\u00a0specific\u00a0metals<\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0environment<\/a>\u00a0into their\u00a0tissues<\/a>, for the primary or subsidiary purpose of commercial exploitation of the extracted metal. [Wiktionary<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Noted in “Plants that suck metals from the soil can be farmed to make our tech<\/em><\/a>,” Michael Allen, NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (9 January 2021):<\/p>\n

One incident that helped draw that attention was [Anthony] van der Ent\u2019s discovery in Borneo. The plant\u2019s sap turned out to contain a whopping 25 per cent nickel by weight. \u201cIt is the best candidate metal crop we have ever found,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The first thing he did on seeing this plant was ask the park ranger where it came from. He couldn\u2019t remember. So van der Ent offered local people a reward if they could tell him \u2013 to no avail. It wasn\u2019t until 2015, a few years after the initial discovery, that he chanced upon a clump of the plants growing on a nearby hillside. From there, he began experimenting with farming metal, otherwise known as agromining or phytomining, as an environmentally friendly alternative to mining. He even named his shrub\u00a0Phyllanthus rufuschaneyi<\/i>\u00a0in homage to the inventor of agromining.<\/p>\n

If you go to the state of Sabah in Borneo these days, you can find what van der Ent calls the \u201cfirst tropical metal farm\u201d. There, he and his colleagues are growing that nickel-loving woody shrub. Each year, they coppice the plants, pulp them and extract the metal. In 2019, they reported a yield of\u00a0250 kilograms of nickel a year<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 currently worth almost $4000 \u2013 from each hectare of land.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve gotta wonder how long a field can be productive. Or does the metal move upward somehow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phytomining: The\u00a0planting\u00a0(and subsequent\u00a0harvesting) of\u00a0vegetation\u00a0that selectively\u00a0concentrate\u00a0specific\u00a0metals\u00a0from the\u00a0environment\u00a0into their\u00a0tissues, for the primary or subsidiary purpose of commercial exploitation of the extracted metal. [Wiktionary] Noted in “Plants that suck metals from the soil can be farmed to make our tech,” Michael Allen, NewScientist (9 January 2021): One incident that helped draw that attention \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32132,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32131\/revisions\/32132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}