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Minerals Engineering xxx (2004) xxxxxx

This article is also available online at:
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A eld demonstration of gold phytoextraction technology

Christopher Anderson

a,b,*

, Fabio Moreno a, John Meech

Institute of Natural Resources, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

b
Tiaki Resources Ltd., Palmerston North, New Zealand
The Centre for Environmental Research in Minerals, Metals and Materials (CERM3), The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Received 17 June 2004; accepted 27 July 2004

Abstract
The removal of metals from metaliferous soil by living plants is termed phytoextraction. The technology can be used for remedial
purpose (phytoremediation), or potentially for economic prot (phytomining or phyto-reclamation). Gold has been suggested as a
likely candidate for phytomining. Plants do not normally accumulate gold; the metal must be made soluble before uptake can occur.
However some plants exude natural lixiviants that can mobilize gold in a soil. Laboratory and greenhouse research has shown that
uptake of gold can be induced using lixiviants such as cyanide and thiocyanate. Our preliminary modeling predicts that a harvested
crop of 10 t/ha biomass (dry) with a gold concentration of 100 mg/kg (100 g/t), which would yield 1 kg of gold per hectare, could be
economically viable. No study, however, has examined the practicality of this target in a eld environment. During 2003, a eld
demonstration study for gold phytoextraction was carried out in collaboration with Companhia Vale do Rio Doce at the Fazenda
Brasileiro mine in Bahia, Brazil. The plant species Brassica juncea (Indian mustard) and Zea mays (corn) were tested for their ability
to grow on an oxidized ore pile containing 0.6 g/t gold and to absorb mobilized gold after cyanide and thiocyanate treatment. Brassica juncea showed the best ability to concentrate gold giving an average of 39 mg/kg after sodium cyanide treatment. Correlation of
this result with a greenhouse plant-uptake model shows the eld trial results are in good accord with those obtained under controlled
conditions. Laboratory and greenhouse evidence therefore suggests that a target recovery of one kg of gold by plants from one hectare of land is a realistic achievement for a soil or ore resource with at least 2 g/t gold.

2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Gold ores; Leaching; Environmental; Reclamation

1. Introduction
The link between plants and mineralization has been
recognized since medieval time. The subject of biogeochemistry seeks to correlate metal concentrations in
plants with those in the soil as a tool for mineral exploration. Only in the 20th century, however, have analytical techniques become widely available to analyze
plant tissues for their metal concentration. Since the
turn of the 20th century, there have been many reports
of gold accumulation by plants, in particular trees.
*

Corresponding author. Tel.: +64 6 356 9099; fax: +64 6 350 5632.
E-mail address: c.w.n.anderson@massey.ac.nz (C. Anderson).

0892-6875/$ - see front matter
2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.mineng.2004.07.002

Work conducted over 30 years in Canada by Harry

Warren and his colleagues from the University of British
Columbia showed that common conifers could accumulate up to 20 lg/kg gold (ppb dry weight) over gold mineralization (Warren and Delavault, 1950). Dunn (1995)
reported a background level of gold in plants of
0.2 lg/kg dry weight, although this author stated that
values up to 100 lg/kg could be found. Plant accumulation of a variety of other metals has also been documented since the late 19th century. In 1885, Baumann,
a German scientist found over 1% zinc in the herbs Viola
calaminaria and Thlaspi calaminare growing on the Aachen calamine deposits, while in 1948, two Italian scientists (C. Minguzzi and O. Vergnano) recorded a nickel

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C. Anderson et al. / Minerals Engineering xxx (2004) xxxxxx

content of 0.79% in the leaves of the Tuscan shrub Alyssum bertolonii (Brooks, 1998). These were two of the rst
widely available reports of signicant metal uptake by
plants.
In the 1970s, a New Zealand scientist formally named
the ability of plants to accumulate high concentrations
of metal. Robert Brooks and his colleagues coined the
term hyperaccumulation to describe the natural process
by which certain plant species could accumulate metals
to concentration levels more than 1000 mg/kg dry weight
(Brooks et al., 1977). Brooks denition was developed
with a focus on Ni-accumulating plants, but today,
hyperaccumulators have also been identied for the metals Cd, Cu, Co, Mn, Se, Tl and Zn. The current criterion
used to dene a hyperaccumulator is a plant that can
accumulate metal to a concentration that is 100 times
greater than normal plants growing in the same
environment.
Plants can be forced to accumulate metals for which
hyperaccumulators are not known, if the dissolution of
these metals is increased in the soil pore-water. Induced
hyperaccumulation is the term used to describe the
chemical amendment of a soil to make any plant species
accumulate a target metal. The rst report of induced
hyperaccumulation was for the uptake of lead by corn
(Zea mays), using the chelating chemical EDTA (Huang
and Cunnigham, 1996). Anderson et al. (1998a,b) reported induced hyperaccumulation of gold by Indian
mustard plants (Brassica juncea) after soil amendment
with the chemical, ammonium thiocyanate. They dened gold hyperaccumulation as a concentration above
1 mg/kg in the dry weight of plant tissues. Induced
hyperaccumulation was recently reported for mercury
(Moreno et al., 2004) and is also feasible for Ag, Pd
and Pt.
During the 1980s phytoremediation became recognized as a potential application for hyperaccumulators.
Phytoremediation is dened as the use of plants and
their associated root-bound microbial communities to
remove, contain, degrade or render harmless environmental contaminants (Robinson et al., 2001). It was
rst proposed by scientists in the USA (Chaney, 1983)
and later in Europe (Baker and Brooks, 1989; McGrath
et al., 1993). Phytoremediation using a hyperaccumulator involves cropping plants on a metaliferous or contaminated soil that will accumulate one or more
metals in their above-ground tissues during a growth cycle (phytoextraction). The plants are then harvested and
incinerated to generate a metal-rich ash for safe disposal. If the metals in question are relatively valuable,
it may be economic to recover them into a pure form.
An operation where metals are mined using plants is
known in the scientic literature as phytomining.
There are several misconceptions associated with this
term. First, the commercial recovery of metals by plants
is not mining but rather, it is farming. There is a

perception by some that phytoextraction is advocated

as an alternative to conventional mining. To further differentiate the technology, the authors of this work prefer
to use the term phyto-reclamation to describe the use
of plants to commercially recover metals from waste
land. This term was rst coined by John Meech of the
University of British Columbia in 2002. Although
descriptions of various commercial or eld-scale applications can be found in the literature (for example McGrath et al., 2002; Robinson et al., 2003), and several
patents have been taken out on the technology (for
example Ni-phytomining using several Alyssum species;
Chaney et al., 1998), such examples are relatively rare,
and phytoextraction remains a developing technology.
Gold could be a candidate for phyto-reclamation as it
is a valuable metal that is often found in relatively high
concentrations in spent heap leach pads and waste
dumps. Research in New Zealand has sought to demonstrate the feasibility of gold phyto-reclamation in the
laboratory and greenhouse environments (Anderson et
al., 1998a,b; Msuya et al., 2000). To make gold phytoreclamation viable, the research target is to harvest a
crop with a dry biomass of 10 t from 1 ha of land, and
to induce a gold concentration in the dry biomass of
100 mg/kg. This would yield 1 kg of gold per hectare.
During 2003, a eld test was conducted to explore the
viability of this proposition. The trial was carried out
in collaboration with Companhia Vale do Rio Doce
(CVRD) at the Fazenda Brasileiro mine, north of the
city of Salvador in Bahia, Brazil. The outcome of the
trial is described in this paper.
1.1. The Fazenda Brasileiro gold mine
Fazenda Brasileiro is one of Brazils leading gold
mines. The mine has been active for 15 years, with
underground and open pit operations generating an annual output of 100,000150,000 ounces. The estimated
gold reserve as of December 31, 2002 was 262,000
ounces with an additional measured or indicated gold
resource of 128,000 ounces and an inferred gold resource of 75,000 ounces. In late 2003 ownership of the
mine transferred from CVRD to Yamana Gold Inc.
The mine is situated in a semi-arid ecosystem described as caatinga in Portuguese; the native vegetation is predominately xerophytic. Annual precipitation
over the years 19852002 averaged 600 mm, but with a
very pronounced dry season between May and October,
hence rainfall during the rainy season can be severe.
Two zones of mineralisation are mined at the Fazenda Brasileiro operation, a zone of sulphide ore and
an overlying oxidised ore.
The weathering prole is up to 30 m deep and covered
by a 1 m thick layer of soil characterized by a high silt
content with fragments of quartz. Visible signs of weathering include carbonate dissolution, sulde oxidation

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and incipient chlorite oxidation with the formation of an

orange halo. Sulfate (jarosite, gipsite and melanterite),
arsenate (escorodite and arsenosyderite) and hydroxide
(goethite and ferrihydrate) formation is pronounced in
the oxidation zone below the hydrostatic level. Plagioclase is partially altered to kaolinite while chlorite is partially replaced by reddish kaolin. Near surface, hematite
boxworks show the presence of goethite and other sulfates. Gold occurs in tabular form as small particles
(average size <15 lm) lling cavities or boxworks and
is generally associated with arsenates and sulfates. Gold
is also associated with hematite and goethite near the
surface of the oxide zone. Gold is recovered from the
oxide ore using heap leaching.
The sulphide zone is characterised by vein mineralisation ranging from a few centimetres to 4 m wide. Gold is
associated with quartz, arsenopyrite and pyrite in varying proportions. Some veins are formed by quartz,
occurring with arsenopyrite and/or plagioclase. Other
veins are formed by plagioclase or massive arsenopyrite.
Gold from the sulphide ore is recovered using a cyanidation-CIP circuit.

2. Trial plot design and construction

A mini ore pad 15 m 15 m 0.5 m deep was constructed on top of a waste-rock dump at the Fazenda
Brasileiro mine site. The base of the pad was lined with
a geo-textile and then lled with about 150 t of lowgrade oxide ore. The plot was designed to contain two
ore preparations. Fifty percent of the pad was lled with
an unamended oxide ore (
Ca) and the other half with
ore amended with 8 kg/t of calcium hydroxide (+Ca).
Calcium hydroxide is added to the oxide ore during
crushing to maintain stability of the gold cyanide complex during heap leaching. Amended and non-amended
ore was used for the plant-uptake study to test the
hypothesis that the gold cyanide complex would be
more stable at high pH and thus more available for uptake. Ore for the phyto-reclamation trial was taken directly from the crushed ore stockpile.
Urea and a general NPK fertilizer were applied by
hand across the plot area (5 kg of each). Five rows each
of Brassica juncea (Indian mustard) and Zea mays (corn)

Fig. 1. The phyto-reclamation trial plot 6 weeks after seeding. Note

the poor health of plants growing on Ca-amended ore (foreground),
the healthy plants growing on the unamended ore (at the back), as well
as the sprinkler irrigation system (across the centre of each half of the
ore).

were then hand-seeded across both ore preparations.

Each row was 0.5 m in width and separated from the
next row by 0.5 m. The plot was watered using a sprinkler irrigation system twice daily (Fig. 1).
Six weeks after seeding, the plot was treated with cyanide and a combination of thiocyanate and hydrogen
peroxide to induce the uptake of gold (Table 1). Chemicals were hand irrigated onto the plot as 400 L of solution using a small electric pump at an approximate ow
rate of 0.55 L/s. Two elevated 1000 L tanks provided the
necessary head pressure. All treated plants were harvested one week after lixiviant irrigation, then dried
and packaged at the mine. All biomass was dead at
the time of harvest as was expected. Substrate samples
were collected from six random locations across the plot
to 10 cm depth using a hand corer immediately before
treatment, and again at the time of harvesting. All samples were shipped to New Zealand for analysis.

3. Gold content of the ore

Ore samples were pulverized to less than 1 mm. Subsamples were digested on a water bath with aqua regia

Table 1
Description of lixiviant treatments
Treatment

Chemical

Application

Solution concentration

1
2
3

NH4SCN/peroxide
NaCN
KCN

0.3 g/kg (0.23 g/kg SCN) as a 3.7% peroxide solution

0.15 g/kg (0.08 g/kg CN)
0.15 g/kg (0.06 g/kg CN)

4.3 g/L of SCN

1.40 g/L CN

1.03 g/L CN

Note. The chemical application rate is presented in two ways in Table 1. The total mass of chemical applied per treatment is recorded, as well as the
calculated mass of anion. Peroxide in combination with thiocyanate was shown to be a more ecient lixiviant for gold than thiocyanate alone at acid
pH levels (Massey University unpublished study).

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Table 2
Assay results for oxide ore used in the trial plot

pH
Au analysis

Ca

+Ca

8.9
0.64 g/t

9.5
0.66 g/t

(5 mL), ltered and made-up to 50 mL volume with

hydrochloric acid (2 M) and then analysed using graphite furnace atomic adsorption spectroscopy.
The gold assays obtained for the ore samples are
shown in Table 2. Typical of gold ores, a uniform distribution of gold throughout the test plot proved to be difcult to obtain. Of the six locations across each of the

Ca and +Ca plots, sample assays ranged from 1.6 g/t
to 0.2 g/t for the
Ca plot and 1.6 g/t to 0.3 g/t for the
+Ca plot. Part of this spread could also be due to sampling variations. The gold concentration reported in Table 1 is the average of the six samples.

4. Harvested biomass
Harvested biomass was unpacked on arrival in New
Zealand, re-dried at 70 C, and then weighed (Table 3).
The 6-week growing cycle used in the trial was insucient for the two species to attain maximum biomass.
Under ideal conditions, Brassica juncea yields 1015 t/
ha, while Zea mays yields up to 30 t/ha. Projecting the
biomass gures for the unamended ore plot to a 10-week
growth cycle indicates that a nal biomass of 10 t/ha
from the plot area would have been attained for B. juncea, while a 24-week growing period for Z. mays would
have been needed to achieve this production level. The
6-week period was adopted in consideration of the
schedules of both Massey University and CVRD sta
involved with the operation of the trial.

The dierence in recorded biomass between the
Ca

and +Ca plots indicates phyto-toxicity of the +Ca plot
due to the high pH of the ore amended with Ca(OH)2.
Plants growing on the +Ca material were visibly in
poor health in comparison to those on the
Ca plot
which looked very good. Note that the data show that
Z. mays is more tolerant of alkaline conditions than B.
juncea.

5. Metal accumulation by the plants

5.1. Analytical procedure
A bulk sample of dried biomass (100 g) for each treatment and species combination was ground using a
Cyclotec 1093 Sample Mill at Massey University. Replicate subsamples of ground biomass (100 mg) were
weighed into borosilicate test tubes and ashed for 20 h
at 500 C. The ash was then transferred into plastic
digestion cups and digested on a water bath with aqua
regia (5 mL). Digest solutions were then made to
10 mL volume with hydrochloric acid (2 M), and analysed by ame atomic adsorption spectroscopy. Calibration standards were prepared from Spectrosol 1000 mg/
L gold solution. Reagent blanks were carried through
the analytical procedure.
5.2. Quality control
No biological standard is commercially available with
the elevated concentrations of gold suitable for hyperaccumulation studies. To conrm the accuracy of the New
Zealand analysis, samples were submitted to Acme Labs
in Vancouver, Canada for re assay followed by digestion and ICP spectroscopy of the dore bead.

Table 3
Calculated biomass for the harvested plant material
Treatment

Ca
SCN
NaCN
KCN
+Ca
SCN
NaCN
KCN

Plant

Area (m2)

Dry biomass (kg)

Equivalent biomass (t/ha)

Brassica juncea
Zea mays
Brassica juncea
Zea mays
Brassica juncea
Zea mays

1.5
1.5
1.5
3
3
1.5

0.55
0.88
0.83
1.12
0.97
0.74

3.67
5.87
5.55
3.75
3.24
4.95

Brassica juncea
Zea mays
Brassica juncea
Zea mays
Brassica juncea
Zea mays

1.5
1.5
1.5
3
3
1.5

0.11
0.30
0.09
0.67
0.19
0.37

0.71
2.05
0.60
2.22
0.62
2.47

Note. Due to the trial design there were two dierent areas for treatment: 1.5 m2 corresponds to one row of treated biomass, 3 m2 corresponds to two
rows of treated biomass.

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5.3. Results
The results presented in Table 4 report average gold
and copper concentrations in the biomass harvested
across each treatment area. Accumulated metal concentrations were signicantly higher in Brassica juncea than
in Zea mays. For B. juncea, NaCN induced a slightly
greater gold uptake than did KCN, although no such
dierence was apparent for copper. The highest average
gold assay achieved was 39 mg/kg for B. juncea with unamended ore. The re assays from Acme conrm the results from the Massey University procedure as can be
seen in Table 4. For gold assays, this type of error is typical and acceptable.
Five individual Brassica juncea plants were harvested
and kept separate from the bulk biomass. These individual plants were not ground, but rather, were split into
5-cm leaf and stem intervals for atomic adsorption analysis at Massey University (Table 5). The gold concentrations show a variation that indicates that Brassica juncea
translocates gold to all plant organs when using CN
treatment. Higher concentrations were observed in the
upper stem and leaf tissues of these individual plant

samples relative to basal biomass. A similar study conducted in February 2003 on the distribution of gold
throughout a plant showed that when the more toxic thiocyanate treatment is used, gold is retained at the base
of the plant (Anderson, 2004). Gold concentrations reported in Table 5 are higher than the average of
39 mg/kg reported for B. juncea in Table 4, reecting
the selective harvesting of healthy plant materials for
this analysis that were presumed to have accumulated
increased levels of gold.
Variability in the plant-gold concentration is also a
function of variability of the ore-gold concentration.
The average Au concentration for the
Ca plot was
0.64 mg/kg, however six replicates reported a range from
0.2 to 1.6 mg/kg. Individual plants collected from an
area with higher soil-gold concentration are expected
to have higher plant-gold concentrations than the average. Unfortunately, during harvesting no attempt was
made to correlate variations in gold concentrations in
the plant and soil samples.
Gold was not the only metal accumulated by the
plants after lixiviant treatment. Treated plants accumulated signicant and high concentrations of copper after

Table 4
Average metal concentrations for each plant and treatment combination
Treatment

Au mg/kg (sd) AA

Au mg/kg re assay

Cu mg/kg (sd) AA

Control
SCN
SCN
SCN
NaCN
NaCN
NaCN
KCN
KCN
KCN

<0.1
<1
<1
2 (0.5)
20 (1.5)
20 (2.7)
39 (1.1)
10 (2.9)
8 (0.7)
30 (3.4)

1.2
1.0
5.3
17.2
16.1
35.9
15.3
10.7
35.1

50 (36.0)
57 ( 6.3)
62 ( 8.7)
133 (11.0)
137 ( 7.3)
100 ( 2.2)
541 (14.0)
112 ( 4.8)
61 ( 5.7)
571 (36.0)

Zea mays
Zea mays
Brassica juncea
Zea mays
Zea mays
Brassica juncea
Zea mays
Zea mays
Brassica juncea

Ca
+Ca

Ca

Ca
+Ca

Ca

Ca
+Ca

Ca

Note. SCN indicates combined SCN/peroxide treatment. Insucient biomass was collected from the Brassica juncea +Ca plots to permit meaningful
analysis. AA denotes assay results using ame atomic adsorption at Massey University.

Table 5
Distribution of gold concentration through ve individual plants
Section of plant

Gold concentration (mg/kg)

A1

A2

A3

Average

sd

Stem biomass
05 cm stem
510 cm stem
1015 cm stem
1520 cm stem
2025 cm stem
2530 cm stem

24.5
16.7
19.4
19.7

26.9
39.5
28.1
24.8
45.2
46.8

10.4
6.3
30.7
28.5

15.5
16.0
12.2
41.9

7.1
12.4

16.9
18.2
22.6
28.7
45.2
46.8

8.6
12.6
8.4
9.5

Leaf biomass
510 cm leaf
1015 cm leaf
1520 cm leaf
2530 cm leaf

43.7
63.1

36.4

30.0
24.1

30.6

45.2

45.2
36.8
39.3
36.4

9.7
20.9

Note. Plants A and C were treated with KCN, B with NaCN. All plants were harvested from the
Ca plot.

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cyanide irrigation of the plot. Mortality of the harvested

plants is attributed to accumulation of a toxic concentration of copper, not to cyanide poisoning of the soil.
5.4. Percentage recovery from the ore
The assayed gold concentrations in the plant and ore
material, and the reported biomass values, allow for calculation of the level of gold recovery into the harvested
plants (Table 6).
The total mass of gold accumulated for each treatment was calculated as a product of the average gold
concentration in the plant material and the dry weight
of the harvested biomass. The total mass of substrate
in each treatment area was calculated assuming a treatment depth of 15 cm (the observed rooting depth for the
6-week growth cycle) and a bulk density of the ore of
1.3 g/cm3. The mass of gold within this treatment volume was then calculated assuming an average gold concentration of 0.6 g/t.
The highest gold recovery for the Brazil trial was 18%
(Brassica juncea, NaCN treatment, no lime amendment
of the ore). This gure agrees well with results from
greenhouse and laboratory uptake trials in New Zealand. After cyanide treatment, B. juncea has been reported to accumulate between 10% and 20% of gold
present in the substrate during a single treatment cycle
(Anderson et al., 2003). Due to the growth structure of
plant roots, it is probably unrealistic to expect a crop
to accumulate more than 25% of the gold in the substrate for any single cycle since the roots will not ll
all of the pore volume in the pile. An initial cycle recovery of 18% gold in the crop means that each plot would
require about 34 cycles to recover the same percentage
of gold as occurs from a typical heap leach operation.

to the concentration of metal in the substrate. Fig. 2

illustrates one experiment where gold uptake by Brassica
juncea was induced using potassium cyanide at an application rate of 0.2 g of KCN per kg of soil (Anderson
et al., 2003) where cyanide was applied as a solution
to greenhouse plants growing in pots containing 0.5 kg
of growth media.
Interpretation of the data in Fig. 2 allows for the derivation of a general model to quantify the relationship
between substrate and plant gold concentrations. A logarithmic model was tted to the data set. The model was
used to investigate the similarity of the Brazil eld results to those obtained under laboratory or greenhouse
conditions (see Eq. (1)).
y 51:314 lnx 62:882

If Eq. (1) is solved for x = 0.6 (the gold concentration

of the ore in the Brazilian eld trial), the expected gold
concentration in the plant material is 37 mg/kg. The assay result obtained for harvested Brassica juncea (39 mg/
kg) after NaCN treatment is in good agreement with the
predicted level obtained under laboratory-controlled

200

Gold concentration in the plant (mg/kg)

5.5. Correlation of eld data with a greenhouse uptake

model

160

120

y = 51.314ln(x) + 62.882

80

R2 = 0.7042
40

The eld research conducted at the Fazenda Brasileiro site was the culmination of several years of research
performed in New Zealand. Previous work has consistently shown that plants accumulate gold in proportion

Gold concentration in the soil (mg/kg)

Fig. 2. Experimental relationship between the concentration of gold in
the soil and the induced concentration of gold in the plant.

Table 6
Calculated gold recovery for all harvested biomass
Plant and treatment

[Au] in plant mg/kg

Harvested biomass (kg)

Mass Au in plant (mg)

Total mass
Au in plot (mg)

% Recovery by plants

Brassica juncea
NaCN
Ca (1 row)
KCN
Ca (2 rows)

39
30

0.83
0.97

32.4
29.1

176
354

18.4
8.2

Zea mays
NaCN
Ca (2 rows)
NaCN +Ca (2 rows)
KCN
Ca (1 row)
KCN +Ca (1 row)

20
20
10
8

1.12
0.67
0.74
0.37

22.4
13.4
7.4
3.0

354
354
176
176

6.4
7.6
4.2
0.8

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conditions. The model is able to predict the gold concentration in eld-harvested biomass, based on gold content
of the substrate.
The target of our gold phyto-reclamation research is
to harvest a crop with a gold concentration of 100 mg/
kg. Eq. (1) can also be used to calculate the concentration
of gold in a soil that might yield this plant concentration.
If y is set to 100, x calculates as 2.0. So, if Eq. (1) is a
proper description of the outcome of the eld trials, a
gold concentration of 2 mg/kg is required in the substrate
to yield a crop with a gold concentration of 100 mg/kg.

6. Potential applications of phyto-reclamation technology

At this point phyto-reclamation is not put forward as
being competitive with conventional recovery processes
such as heap-leaching for low-grade materials. However,
for niche applications such as the reclamation of a spent
heap-leach pile or for a small tonnage ore deposit, it is
suggested that phyto-reclamation could be a useful approach to institute revegetation practices that would
also recover residual gold in the pile. Should the method
be found sustainable for continued application for 4 or 5
growth cycles, the generation of organic material in the
pile will lead to better and more hardy vegetation on the
surface.
A second application area involves retreatment of
waste dumps from artisanal mining operations where
the piles are often contaminated with mercury. In this
case the process of phyto-reclamation could reclaim
both gold and mercury from the pile for treatment to
x the mercury into a disposable product with the gold
recovery paying for the whole operation. The local community could be weaned o their dependence on mining
into a technology that eventually could result in creating
produce for the local community from the site through
long-term agricultural practices. It will be necessary of
course to monitor the mercury levels remaining in the
pile and to determine how mercury distributes into plant
material over time. Hyperaccumulator plants could be
used initially to accelerate the concentration of mercury
and gold with a gradual change to a crop that is more
benign, such as maize or canola that would be hardy enough to thrive and yet, not accumulate residual mercury
that would then be at concentration levels below which
hyperaccumulation will not occur.
A key issue, of course, will be to examine the distribution of metals into crop produce cells versus plant support cells such as stems and leaves.

feasible technology. For the rst time, signicant induced gold accumulation into plant biomass is reported
outside a controlled laboratory or greenhouse environment. An average gold assay of 39 mg/kg was achieved
in Brassica juncea after a NaCN treatment of 0.6 mg/
kg gold ore. The highest individual gold concentration
determined through analysis of selected biomass was
63 mg/kg (NaCN treatment of B. juncea). B. juncea accumulated a signicantly higher gold concentration than
did Zea mays.
No advantage was gained through increasing the pH
of the plot area by amendment with lime. Although
higher pH increases stability of the AuCN complex,
the trade-o is signicantly reduced biomass production. Cyanide treatment showed limited toxicity to the
plants as illustrated by translocation of gold from plant
roots to the uppermost stem and leaf organs of individual plants. Although all treated plant material was dead
at the time of harvest, mortality is attributed to the accumulation of metals such as copper, that are more phytotoxic than is gold, and not to toxicity of the lixiviant
treatment.
Thiocyanate did not induce gold accumulation above
2 mg/kg. The oxide ore in Brazil was alkaline and so, it is
considered unsuitable for thiocyanate treatment. The
gold thiocyanate complex is stable only under acidic
pH conditions.
Although the target gold concentration of 100 mg/kg
was not obtained during the Brazilian eld trial, modeling studies indicate that this is due to low gold concentration in the ore. A gold concentration in the ore or
waste of 2 g/t should yield a gold content of 100 mg/kg
in the plants.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the generous support of
CVRD during the trial. Particular thanks is extended
to Mr. Alcides Palma and Mr. Jose Cerquiera, CVRD
management sta at the Fazenda Brasilieiro mine during 2003. The funding agencies for this research are also
acknowledged: CERM3 at the University of British
Columbia (through the Canada Foundation for Innovation Project Grant 2545); Akzo Nobel Chemicals Pte.
Ltd. (Singapore); the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology (Contract MAUX0020);
and the National Council for Scientic and Technological Development of Brazil (CNPq).

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