Plants in Antarctica: Current and Future Phytoremediation Potential

As an extremely cold, dry and windy part of the world, Antarctica is a unique continent that can only be inhabit by limited number of organisms. For a long time, Antarctica was a pristine area. But nowadays, it has been invaded with many kinds of pollutants derived from human activities such as solid, liquid and metal wastes. To prevent further deterioration in Antarctic environment, remediation process is strongly needed. Phytoremediation is an environmentally clean technique to remove pollutants using plants. This is an alternative to the current physical and chemical remediation method. The success of phytoremediation technique is influenced by plant species and various environmental parameters. Unlike in the temperate and tropical region, an extremely low temperature in Antarctica does not permit the growth of many types of vegetations. Thus, phytoremediation process is scarce. Despite this limitation, there are growing interests among scientists to investigate the potential of phytoremediation to occur in tremendously harsh condition. This paper reviews current pollution problems in the Antarctic region and the possibility of phytoremediation technique to be implemented in this continent.