American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2014, 5, 1156-1162 Published Online April 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ajps http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ajps.2014.59128 How to cite this paper: Singh, J., Hembram, P. and Basak, J. (2014) Potential of Vigna unguiculata as a Phytoremediation Plant in the Remediation of Zn from Contaminated Soil. American Journal of Plant Sciences, 5, 1156-1162. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ajps.2014.59128 Potential of Vigna unguiculata as a Phytoremediation Plant in the Remediation of Zn from Contaminated Soil Jyotsana Singh * , Padmalochan Hembram * , Jolly Basak # Department of Biotechnology, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India Email: # jolly.basak@visva-bharati.ac.in Received 20 January 2014; revised 3 March 2014; accepted 19 March 2014 Copyright © 2014 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract Population explosion in the last decades together with global industrialization has caused heavy- metal contamination of air, water and soil, resulting in diverse incurable effects on humans and on the stability of the ecosystem. Non-biodegradable heavy-metals can remain in the ecosystem and the threat associated with their bioaccumulation in food chains represents one of the major envi- ronmental and health problems of present day society. Several studies were carried out to under- stand the ecological effects of the heavy-metal Zn in soil-plant systems. Plants often have a zinc uptake that their systems cannot handle, due to the accumulation of zinc in soils. Of the several Zn toxicity symptoms, fatal are yield reduction, stunted growth, chlorosis, reduced chlorophyll syn- thesis and chloroplast degradation. Vigna unguiculata is an herbaceous, annual plant in the pea family Fabaceae. In the present study, an experiment was performed to evaluate the Zn phytoex- tracting ability of V. unguiculata under in vitro condition. We establish that V. unguiculata can up- take a considerable amount of the heavy-metal zinc and this phytoextraction property can be uti- lized in long run for the cleanup of zinc contaminated soil. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of Zn phytoextraction ability of V. unguiculata. Keywords Heavy-Metal Toxicity; Phytoremediation; Proline; Atomic Absorption; Vigna unguiculata 1. Introduction Population explosion in the last few decades together with global industrialization has caused heavy metal con- * The authors contributed equally to the paper. # Corresponding author.