Phytomining - Using Plants to Boost the Supply of Critical Minerals
More Sources are Needed
Critical minerals, and the subset of rare earths in particular, are used in everything from tech products and electric vehicles to solar panels and weapons. Availability and refining capabilities of many critical minerals are limited and concentrated. Moreover, China controls well more than half of the world supply of rare earths and periodically restricts exports. Despite efforts by governments and mining companies, new sources of supply for many critical minerals remain inadequate. The result is that there won’t be enough of some types of critical minerals to meet rising demand in the coming years, according to analysis from Bloomberg Intelligence.
How Phytomining Works
Phytomining offers a potential solution. It uses “hyperaccumulator” plants that extract metal from the soil, creating a harvestable biomass with minerals in the plants. These hyperaccumulators have evolved so they take high amounts of metal out of the soil and accumulate them without damaging the plant. While less than one percent of plants are hyperaccumulators and each one more often extracts just one type of mineral, phytomining can be used for more than a dozen types of minerals and as much as 5 percent of a plant’s weight can be a mineral. Removing the minerals from the plants involves burning the plants and extracting the minerals from the resulting ash.
While the process for phytomining may sound simple, the industry faces a variety of complexities. The number of places with sufficient minerals that are close enough to the surface for plants to extract is limited. Scientists are also looking for plants that can accumulate larger percentages of a mineral so that their yield is greater. And since current processes involve burning that results in ash, developing a more energy-efficient extraction process or using the biomass for multiple purposes could reduce costs or increase revenue.
Researchers at universities around the world are working to identify more plants that are successful at extracting the minerals and new ways of processing them that are more cost-effective. Some teams are looking for new hyperaccumulator plants. Others are also looking at additional regions for phytomining, as some have found that some ‘metal crops’ in tropical regions such as Southeast Asia are easy to cultivate, have high nickel concentrations and have high biomass yields.
Others are working on more efficient ways of improving the yield. Currently, a plant with nickel content of about 2.5 percent could produce about 250 kilograms of the metal per hectare per year. Using the biomass in new ways could generate revenue beyond just the mineral, and lower-cost burning could reduce costs.
Even though phytomining is unlikely to become a large enough industry to resolve the shortage of some critical minerals, the potential solution is so important for adding more supply that the US Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) granted $9.9 million in 2024 to seven projects aimed at strengthening domestic supply chains of nickel. The nickel could be used in manufacturing steels, alloys, and lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and other technologies.
Companies in Phytomining
While academics around the world are working on research that could turn phytomining into a more viable commercial practice, the number of companies actually doing phytomining is currently small. However, a small number of companies are already at work. While nickel is a focus for a number of these firms, extraction of other minerals is possible.
In South Africa, for instance, Paris-based Genomines is phytomining nickel with a type of daisy. It uses gene editing to make the plant three times larger and able to soak up twice as much nickel, according to Fast Company. The company raised $45 million in 2025 to scale up a sustainable and affordable supply of the metal. It forecasts its cost of producing nickel oxide at around $10,000 per ton, compared to an industry median of around $16,000 per ton.
Phytomining startup Metalplant and gene editing firm Verinomics have partnered to develop higher-nickel yielding hyperaccumulators for development of a nickel phytomining industry in the United States, according to The Carbon Herald. They expect photosynthesis to power the purification of nickel from low to high grades.
In Southeast Asia, The Edge reported that Botanickel, a joint venture between Aperam, a steel producer in Luxembourg, and Econick, a French biotechnology firm, brought phytomining to Sabah in 2023. The company, which says it is the first to launch this solution in Malaysia, cultivates crops in naturally nickel-rich land in places such as Ranau in Sabah. The plants are harvested, dried and processed into bio-ash from which it can extract nickel.
In the US, Rare Flora uses plants to extract rare earths from soil by targeting locations where deposits are not concentrated enough for traditional mining yet are too concentrated for agriculture. It notes that phytomining does not incur the capital and environmental costs of a traditional mine and can begin production within months.
While phytomining seems unlikely to make a massive dent in the global mining industry, it offers a supplement that can help resolve shortages. Startups that identify a viable business model could generate revenue and build a strong business in a niche with growing demand. Using techniques such as gene editing could increase their productivity. Investors who have a relatively high risk tolerance can track developments and invest at early stages in promising companies.
