Phytomanagement with forage grasses for sustainable remediation of contaminated tailings soil: enhancing soil functionality and microbial communities

Exposed metal tailings represent a hazardous source of contamination to neighboring ecosystems. For soils polluted with heavy metals, traditional physical and chemical approaches to remediation are effective and are associated with high costs, the potential for secondary pollution, environmental degradation, and practical limitations (Mahar et al., 2016). Consequently, there is a growing need to identify less environmentally impactful approaches, such as phytoremediation using hyperaccumulators. Phytoremediation is a low-cost, sustainable, large-scale, and eco-friendly technology that has widespread public acceptance.