a research team has stumbled upon a bug that feasts on arsenic. Present in the root nodules of black gram, the bacteria increases soil fertility and fixes nitrogen. It could be an effective way of bioremediation of arsenic from contaminated soil, says a team of researchers from iit Kharagpur and Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal. They isolated a tolearant strain of rhizobium species from the root nodules of plants growing in contaminated soil.
For the study, the bacteria isolated from the root nodules of the plant were cultured and exposed to sodium arsenate solution.