Phytoremediation in the context of "Bioremediation"

Panicum virgatum, commonly known as switchgrass, is a perennial warm season bunchgrass native to North America, where it occurs naturally from 55°N latitude in Canada southwards into the United States and Mexico. Switchgrass is one of the dominant species of the central North American tallgrass prairie and can be found in remnant prairies, in native grass pastures, and naturalized along roadsides. It is used primarily for soil conservation, forage production, game cover, as an ornamental grass, in phytoremediation projects, fiber, electricity, heat production, for biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and more recently as a biomass crop for the production of ethanol and butanol.

Other common names for switchgrass include tall panic grass, Wobsqua grass, blackbent, tall prairiegrass, wild redtop, thatchgrass, and Virginia switchgrass.

Phytoextraction is a subprocess of phytoremediation in which plants remove dangerous elements or compounds from soil or water, most usually heavy metals, metals that have a high density and may be toxic to organisms even at relatively low concentrations. The heavy metals that plants extract are toxic to the plants as well, and the plants used for phytoextraction are known hyperaccumulators that sequester extremely large amounts of heavy metals in their tissues. Phytoextraction can also be performed by plants that uptake lower levels of pollutants, but due to their high growth rate and biomass production, may remove a considerable amount of contaminants from the soil.

Phytomining, sometimes called agromining, is the concept of extracting heavy metals from the soil using plants. Unlike Phytoremediation, where extraction is used for cleaning up environmental pollutants, phytomining is for the purpose of gathering the metals for economic use.

Phytoming exploits the existence of hyperaccumulator plants which naturally have proteins or compounds that bind with certain metal ions. Once the hyperaccumulation happens, the final metal, or bio-ore, needs to be refined from the plant matter. A 2021 review concluded that the commercial viability of phytomining was "limited" because it is a slow and inefficient process.