Liz Rylott, working in the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products at the University of York and Antony van der Ent, a world-renowned botanist and metal hyperaccumulator specialist at the Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University, contributed an invited 'Viewpoint'.
Summary:
Since its inception over three decades ago, phytomining has finally reached the stage of commercial‐scale implementation, at least for nickel. Much potential remains to be realised for other elements, notably cobalt, selenium, and thallium, but this requires scientific impetus leveraging recent advances in insights garnered from molecular mechanisms of hyperaccumulation, domestication and agronomic development. These advances will also enable us to (genetically) improve hyperaccumulators for use in phytomining by targeted breeding, as well as synthetic biology approaches.