Effects of Double Harvesting on Heavy Metal Uptake by Six Forage Species and the Potential for Phytoextraction in Field

The pollution of soils by heavy metals has dramatically increased in recent decades. Phytoextraction is a technology that extracts elements from polluted soils using hyperaccumulator plants. The selection of appropriate plant materials is an important factor for successful phytoextraction in field. A field study was conducted to compare the efficiency of six high-biomass forage species in their phytoextraction of heavy metals (Cd, Pb, and Zn) from contaminated soil under two harvesting strategies (double harvesting or single harvesting). Among the tested plants, amaranth accumulated the greatest amounts of Cd and Zn, whereas Rumex K-1 had the highest amount of Pb in the shoot under both double and single harvesting. Furthermore, double harvesting significantly increased the shoot biomass of amaranth, sweet sorghum and sudangrass and resulted in higher heavy metal contents in the shoot. Under double harvesting, the total amounts of extracted Cd, Pb and Zn (i.e., in the first plus second crops) for amaranth were 945, 2 650 and 12 400 g ha−1, respectively, the highest recorded among the six plant species. The present results indicate that amaranth has great potential for the phytoextraction of Cd from contaminated soils. In addition, the double harvesting method is likely to increase phytoextraction efficiency in practice.