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Bioremediation and Biodegradation

Predicting Inter-Taxa Differences in Plant Uptake of Cesium-134/137

^a Centre for Research in Plant Science, University of the West of England, Frenchay, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK
^b College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Guangzhou University, Jie Fang Road, Guangzhou 510405, Guangdong Province, P. R. China
^c British Nuclear Group, Berkeley Centre, Berkeley, Gloucestershire, GL13 9PB, UK

^* Corresponding author (Neil.Willey{at}uwe.ac.uk)

Received for publication November 30, 2004. For ^134/137Cs, and many other soil contaminants, research into transfer to plants has focused on particular crops and phytoremediation candidates, producing uptake data for a small proportion of all plant taxa. Despite the significance of differences in uptake between plant taxa, the capacity of soil-to-plant transfer models to predict them is currently confined to those taxa for which data exist, there being no method to predict uptake by other taxa. We used residual maximum likelihood (REML) analysis on data from experiments (including 89 plant taxa from China plus 32 phytoremediation candidates) together with data from the literature, to construct a database of relative ^134/137Cs concentrations in 273 plant taxa. The REML ^134/137Cs concentrations in plants are not normally distributed but significantly clustered. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), coded with a recent ordinal phylogeny for flowering plants, showed that plant taxa do not behave independently for ^134/137Cs concentration because 42 and 15% of inter-taxa differences are associated with phylogeny above the species and ordinal level, respectively. In general, Eudicots, and especially the Caryophyllales, Asterales, and Brassicales, have high ^134/137Cs concentrations, while the Fabales and Magnoliids, in particular Poales, have low ^134/137Cs concentrations. Plants of the stress-tolerant ruderal (S-R) growth strategy sensu Grime have, in general, high concentrations of Cs, while those of the competitive (C) and generalist (C-S-R) strategies have low concentrations, although these effects are less pronounced than those of phylogeny. Plant phylogeny and growth strategy might thus be used to predict a significant portion of inter-taxa differences in plant uptake of ^134/137Cs.

Abbreviations: ANOVA, analysis of variance • C, competitor • C-S-R, generalist growth strategist • REML, residual maximum likelihood • S-R, stress-tolerant ruderal

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JEQ 2005 34: v. [Full Text]