Extensive coal mining activities in Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya, has turned large areas into degraded land, creating unfavourable condition for plant growth due to heavy metal pollution. Owing mostly to existing acidity-related fertility stress, average crop productivity in acid soil regions like Meghalaya is very low, coupled with increasing concentration of heavy metals, productivity has dropped further. Therefore decontamination of these heavy metal polluted soils is very important. Phytoremediation is an aspect of bioremediation that uses plants for the treatment of polluted soils. Therefore, a pot culture experiment was conducted using heavy metal polluted coal mined soil of Jaintia Hills in order to assess the phytoremediation effect of the two crops viz. sunflower and asparagus. From the pot culture experiment, it is observed that the Sunflower was superior phytoremediating crop in comparison to Asparagus. | Phytoremediation effect on heavy metal polluted soils of Jaintia hills in north Eastern Hill region
