Format: ORAL

Tom Morgenstern

Institute of Botany, Faculty of Botany, Technical University Dresden

For the research on hyperaccumulator plants and their uses in phytomining, phytoremediation of soils and many other applications one crucial part is the identification of species which are able to hyperaccumulate metals. To date there is some research done in the Democratic Republic of the Kongo but only a few on the native plants of its neighboring state, the Republic of Angola. In this context herbaria offer a broad spectrum of native plants that can be scanned for hyperaccumulators. The Herbarium Dresdense contains a big collection of over 3000 specimens from Angola. In cooperation with the Herbarium Hamburgense, for a masters project these were scanned for hyperaccumulating species from different regions of Angola, mainly from the north-western Province of Uge as well as from the south of the country. The Global Hyperaccumulators Database was used to pre-select genera and families from which Hyperaccumulating species are known. Small samples of each specimen were analyzed for the concentration of several metals using ICP-OES. Over 130 different species, some with several samples from different locations and organs of the plants were tested to examine the influence of these factors on the metal concentrations. We were able to identify several new aluminum hyperaccumulators containing up to 40.000 mg/kg of its leaf dry mass, one new Mangan hyperaccumulator and discover a rather interesting genus for further searches on new hyperaccumulators.