14 DAY TRIAL // As if the loss of human lives wouldn't be enough for explosive materials, they are also a polluting agent for the soil and for the underground water.
Vast stretches of land are contaminated, especially in the US, with one of the most common explosives, RDX, or cyclonite, a compound which is both toxic and cancerous.
A York University team led by Professor Neil Bruce has discovered that the effects of the explosive material can be efficiently counterbalanced with the help of a micro-organism in the soil which uses nitrogen to grow.
But due to the fact that RDX is very mobile, the bacteria don't succeed to degrade it fast enough to prevent the soil and water contamination. For this reason, York researchers chose to deploy the enzyme in the bacteria into plants, which led to a consistent boost in efficiency.
"We have taken that activity from the bacteria and put it in plants with large amounts of biomass. A tree, for instance, is effectively a big pump, seeking out water, and if we can redeploy the enzyme which degrades the explosive making it harmless, it combines the capabilities of soil bacteria with the high biomass and uptake properties in plants," Professor Neil Bruce said.
"We are using an enzyme already existing in the soil but putting it into a more efficient machine to biodegrade the RDX. It is a sustainable, low maintenance and low cost process which has the potential to clean up large areas of land in military training ranges or industrial sites," he added.