News

During our final project meeting in Ghana, MyJoyonline TV accompanied us to produce a documentary for their online audience.

Under the name „Reviving a poisoned earth: How a fungus is giving hope to Ghana’s contaminated soil“, the film focuses on the problem of mercury contamination of soils through illegal mining and phytoremediation as a solution to restore the degraded soils.

 The documentary features part of the Mercury-AMF research Stuff from Germany and Ghana as well as the communities that are affected by the mercury contamination and gives uniquie isnights into the topic of illegal mining and mercury contamination.

The finished documentary is now ready to be streamed here.

After four years of collaborative research work, we are approaching the successful end of our Mercury-AMF project on 31.12.2022. To discuss the major outcomes of the project, we hosted our final project meeting in Kumasi (Ghana) from 10 to 12 October 2022.

The project meeting looked back at the scientific results that have been accomplished and looked ahead to the potential future implementation of the gained findings, shedding light on the following questions:

·      What new knowledge has been created on the conceptualized phytoremediation of mercury-contaminated mining sites in Ghana and Burkina Faso using perennial legumes associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi?

·      How can this knowledge help to rehabilitate contaminated environments and the affected communities in the mining areas?

·      What are the next steps that need to be taken to implement the proposed phytoremediation technologies into practice?

Additionally, the final project meeting provided the opportunity to discuss the implementation of our research findings with the communities, which are affected by mercury contamination. Excursions, to the demonstration experiment at the Crops Research Institute and former gold mining areas in central Ghana, added a practical dimension to the final project meeting.