This from Richters HerbLetter
By Carolyn Abraham
TORONTO, July 16, [Toronto] Globe and Mail -- Researchers at the
University of Guelph have applied for an international patent on
lemon-scented geraniums, believing they are pollution-eating plants that
could clean the environment and restore a toxic land patch to Garden of
Eden.
Their research has found that the familiar flowering plant has an
uncanny ability to absorb metal and organic pollutants which could help to
detoxify everything from abandoned gas station sites to old mining lands.
They may also be of particular benefit to developing countries whose
crop yields suffer because of naturally occurring high metal content in
their soils.
Plant biologist Praveen Saxena and his team are now hurrying to find
the genes that endow the lemon-scented geranium with its rare ability to
absorb pollutants so they might, through genetic engineering, enhance
those traits.
And although they have not yet discovered those genes, they have
requested in the patent application field last year that their claim
include any genetically modified form of the lemon-scented geranium that
would be used to detoxify the environment.
Patents have been issued on other plants, Dr. Saxena said. But the
issue of laying an ownership claim over a natural life form remains a
controversal area of biotechnology. This is partly because critics argue
that patents often make new agricultural technology unaffordable to
farmers who could benefit from it.
Stephanie De Grandis, associate director of Guelph's business
development office, explained that the patent would not be on the plant,
but on the process of using the plant for cleaning up contaminated soil,
called phytoremediation.
"Anyone who went out to use these geraniums for phytoremediation would
have to come and talk to us [if the patent is granted]," Dr. De Grandis
said, adding that anyone who didn't could face legal action.
After planting the scented geraniums in contaminated soil samples from
an undisclosed site in Canada and conducting a similar trial at a
contaminated Hamilton location, the researchers found that the plants
cleaned up toxic soil and flourished in it.
"With other methods to get rid of toxic metals in the soil, the soil
is left clean, but it's useless," Dr. Saxena said. But by planting
lemon-scented geraniums to clean the soil, the same land could later be
used for farming, he added.
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