An ARC-Discovery project led by Professor Alan Baker and Dr Yaodong Wang in collaboration with Professor Andrew Smith at Department of Plant Sciences, Oxford University, UK, is a physiological and biochemical dissection of cobalt accumulation by plants.

Some nickel-hyperaccumulating plants, e.g. Alyssum spp., are able to accumulate Ni to more than 2% of shoot dry biomass and have been used for commercial phytomining of nickel from mineral wastes and metal-contaminated land. It is interesting that these Ni-hyperaccumulating plants can also hyperaccumulate cobalt, albeit to a lesser degree. The aim of this Honours project is to investigate the differences in detoxification mechanisms between nickel and cobalt in these hyperaccumulator plants, mainly by studying the responses of antioxidant enzymes and metal-chelating ligands in xylem exudates and leaf cells. The project should provide new information on the mode of binding/detoxification of these two heavy metals in hyperaccumulator plants.