Bamboo: A Potential Candidate for Phytoremediation of Chemical Pollutants and Heavy Metals

Phytoremediation is a green and environmentally friendly technology for the removal of chemical pollutants and heavy metals (HMs) from soil using a variety of natural or genetically modified plants to protect ecosystems. Currently, few high-accumulating, fast-growing plants have been identified for phytoremediation purposes. Therefore, some non-hyperaccumulator plant species, which grow faster and have significantly higher total biomass yields despite lower extraction capacities than hyperaccumulator plants, can be used as an alternative to this technology. Bamboo is a promising candidate for phytoremediation due to its fast growth and harvest, greater production of biomass, well-defined root system, and high resilience to abiotic challenges with minimal maintenance. Bamboo and its various parts, such as roots, shoots, rhizomes, leaves and fibres, are very effective in removing HMs such as Pb, Cd and As and various other chemical contaminants from soil and compounds such as benzene and toluene from wastewater. However, excessive HM stress can affect bamboo plants negatively by causing oxidative stress. Therefore, different management techniques have been recognized to improve the phytoremediation capacity of bamboo species, like intercropping, additive use, transgenic crops, microbial phytoremediation and surface cover. Meanwhile, bamboo can serve as a sustainable source of biomass and bioenergy while providing a variety of ecological and economic benefits. Therefore, the present chapter summarizes the mechanisms of the phytoremediation performed by various species of bamboo and their efficiency.