Abstract: Heavy metal contamination in soil has become a serious problem in China in recent years. It not only affects the food safety and human health, but also limits the sustainable development. Among numerous remediation techniques, phytoremediation with hyperaccumulator plants is a low cost, effective, easy to operate, safe, and environmentally friendly technology for remediating heavy metal contaminated soils, and has been considered as one of the most potential green remediation technologies. The history and development of the phytoremediation technique is reviewed, and the essential technical problems limiting the development of the technique on large scale in China, such as selection and identification of the hyperaccumulator, the mechanism of absorption and transport of heavy metals, strengthening measures, and safe disposal and utilization of hyperaccumulator, are elucidated in the present paper. The perspectives of the application of phytoremediation in future are also discussed.

Key words: photosynthetic active radiation interception, canopy, nitrogen application rate, wheat, dry matter distribution.