New Book: Agromining: Farming for Metals

Phytomining will be the subject of a number of papers at next week's Sustainable Minerals '21. In phytomining, metals found in the rhizosphere are taken up by roots of adapted hyperaccumulator plants and concentrated into specific regions of the plant, from which they can be recovered.

Agromining, or phytomining, is an emerging technology whereby these 'metal crops' can be farmed on sub-economic soils or minerals wastes to obtain valuable target elements, and aims to transform the extraction of sources of target elements not accessible by traditional mining and processing techniques.

Agromining: Farming for Metals- Extracting Unconventional Resources Using Plants, is the second and expanded edition of the first book on agromining and presents a comprehensive overview of the metal farming and recovery of the agromining production chain. 

This volume is edited and authored by pioneers in the rapidly expanding field of agromining and presents the latest insights and developments in the field. The book provides in-depth information on the global distribution and ecology of hyperaccumulator plants, their biogeochemical pathways, the influence of rhizosphere microbes, the physiology and molecular biology of hyperaccumulation, as well as aspects of propagation and conservation of these unusual plants. It describes the agronomy of metal crops and opportunities for incorporating agromining into rehabilitation and mine closure, including test cases for agromining of  nickel, cobalt, manganese, arsenic, selenium, cadmium, zinc, thallium, rare earth elements and platinum group elements. 

Since the first edition was published, there have been successful nickel agromining field trials in the tropics (in Malaysia and Guatemala), and these are presented in a dedicated case study chapter. Other new chapters focus on the processing of bio-ore for elements other than nickel, such as rare earth elements and cadmium, and on agromining from industrial wastes such as tailings, and industrial by-products and sites. Furthermore, the book features two new chapters that provide a comprehensive assessment of accumulation of a very wide range of elements from the Periodic Table in various plant species around the globe, and a chapter on practical methods for discovery of hyperaccumulator plant species in the field and in the herbarium. 

This book will be of interest to environmental professionals in the minerals industry, government regulators, and academics.