Ya casi finalizando el semestre se ha podido realizar bastante de acuerdo a lo planeado. Lo mas importante, lo cual era crear un stock numeroso de “Lippia Dulcis” puertorriqueña, va en buen camino. Por otro lado no se ha podido clonar la planta mexicana sin contaminacion. Se ha tratado de rediseñar la manera en que le limpian las plantas e instrumentos, pero siempre se encuentra la contaminacion. Por esto puedo decir que en una escala del 1-5 tenemos un 4 de progreso para la investigacion.

Abtract

The term phytoremediation comes from the use of plants to clean air, water and soils. Plants considered hyper-accumulators can remove large quantities of substances considered contaminants of xenobiotic origin. Lippia dulcis is an autochthonous medicinal plant also used as a natural sweetener by the Mayas. The objective of this research is to study the accumulating characteristics of this plant using available clones grown in vitro. The contaminant of interest is mainly trinitrotoluene (TNT), a common pollutant left on sites where explosives have been used, stored or manufactured.

The Lippia dulcis from Puerto Rico was successfully placed in vitro after several trials under appropriate aseptic techniques. Clones of the mother plant were exposed to increasing amounts of TNT. Plantlets were placed in liquid media doped with TNT (0.0, 5.0 and 75 ppm). Initial results showed that the L. dulcis plantlets continued to grow in the presence of the contaminant. The TNT concentration in the media was measured by HPLC analysis and was found that after several weeks the TNT concentration had decreased considerably. This suggests that L. dulcis may be a viable plant for use as a phytoremediator on soils contaminated with TNT. Future experiments are planned to confirm these preliminary results as well as explore in detail the fate of the contaminant.

Keywords: TNT, Phytoremediation, Contaminated Soils, Lippia Dulcis