rare-earth-elements
Rare-earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 metallic elements — the 15 lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium — that occur naturally in soils and are taken up by plants in trace amounts. Although long considered biologically inert, emerging research suggests REEs can influence plant growth, enzyme activity, and stress responses, with some studies showing stimulatory effects at low concentrations. Understanding how plants absorb, accumulate, and respond to REEs is increasingly important as these elements become more prevalent in agricultural soils due to industrial activity and fertilizer use.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-04-01
Scientists developed a fast, sensitive fluorescence test to measure how much dysprosium—a rare-earth metal used in electric motors and wind turbines—plants absorb into their tissues, paving the way for using plants to mine this critical material from waste sources.
The fluorescence assay can detect dysprosium at concentrations as low as 0.07 μM, with a detection limit of 0.2 μM even in complex plant tissue samples.
Sodium tungstate was incorporated into the method to improve accuracy when measuring dysprosium inside plant matrices.
The high-throughput design of the assay enables efficient screening of many plant species for their rare-earth accumulation potential.