
Thierry LebeauNantes Université | UNIV Nantes · Faculty of Science and Technology
Thierry Lebeau
Professor
Soil to plant transfer of trace elements (Cs, Cu, Pb, Rare Earth), PGPR-plant (phytoremediation), urban and crop soils
About
141
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Introduction
Thierry Lebeau is a full professor at the University of Nantes. For the past 20 years his work has been focussing on non-point source pollutions in soils: trace metals and organic compounds including PCB and pesticides.
He more especially works on plant growth promoting rhizobacteria and the role of siderophores on the mobility of trace metals in soils, and conversely on the effect of trace metals on soil microorganisms. He has also been developing processes associating microorganisms and plants to improve phytoremediation performances for soils contaminated by trace metals and polychlorinated biphenyls. He especially designs bioaugmentation and phytoextraction-based processes to clean-up soil contaminated by various trace metals: Cr, Cs, Cu, Pb, rare earth elements.
Publications
Publications (141)
Lead (Pb) is commonly found in urban soils and can transfer to vegetables. This entails a health risk for consumers of garden crops. The increasing demand of gardening on urban soil linked to the population increase and concentration in urban areas induces an increase in the risk, as people could be forced to cultivate contaminated soils. The aim o...
Bioaugmentation of soils can increase the mobilization of metal(loid)s from the soil-bearing phases. However, once desorbed, these metal(loid)s are mostly complexed to the dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the soil solution, which can restrict their availability to plants (roots mainly taking up the free forms) and then the phytoextraction performa...
Urban gardening is a booming trend. Local authorities are actively taking part in this movement in response to the demand of inhabitants but also because they see it as a way of addressing many of the challenges of the sustainable city. As a result, they are confronted with the issue of soil quality. Urban soils, as an environmental component, are...
In a context of re-greening of urban spaces, it is crucial to examine the impact of green spaces on the population. In this qualitative study carried out in France (Nantes), 28 people with a plot in an allotment garden were questioned through semi-directive interviews about the psychosocial impact of this type of space. Using thematic and lexicomet...
Of all the world's gem opal deposits, Ethiopian's ones stand out for their quantitative production of white opals and orange fire opals. They also provide a significantly amount of intriguing specimens displaying a translucent, porous, white periphery covering a transparent, massive, orange core. These “zoned opals” are stable (they do not evolve w...
Siderophores are biogenic metallophores that can play significant roles in the dynamics of a range of metals, including Cu, in the soil. Understanding the impact of siderophores on the mobility and the availability of metals in soil is required to optimize the efficiency of soil remediation processes such as phytoextraction. This study compared the...
Copper (Cu) contamination of soils may alter the functioning and sustainability of vineyard ecosystems. Cultivating Cu-extracting plants in vineyard inter-rows, or phytoextraction, is one possible way currently under consideration in agroecology to reduce Cu contamination of vineyard topsoils. This option is rarely used, mainly because Cu phytoextr...
Moderately contaminated garden soils can benefit from gentle remediation options such as soil amendments, which improve soil functions and agronomic potentialities while decreasing environmental and human risk. This study aimed to analyze the effects of doses of various common soil amendments generally applied by gardeners on the predicted bioavail...
Pseudomonas fluorescens is a siderophore producing bacteria that is expected to alter the mobility and bioavailability of Cu in vineyard soils due to its ability to produce pyoverdine under iron deficiency. In this study, we monitored the effect of this bacterial species, particularly the production of siderophore, on the mobility and bioavailabili...
Bioaugmentation-assisted phytoextraction was used to reduce the Cu load in vineyard soils. While performance is usually the end point of such studies, here we identified some mechanisms underlying Cu soil to plant transfer, particularly the role of siderophores in the extraction of Cu from the soil-bearing phases and its phytoavailability.
Carbonat...
Rare earth (RE) elements are a group of 17 chemical elements including the 15 lanthanides plus Yttrium and Scandium. RE have been identified as critical elements due to their special properties (e.g., catalytic, metallurgical, nuclear, electrical, magnetic, and luminescent) and various applications in many modern technologies, environment and econo...
In the context of climate change, Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs), a recently developed concept, are increasingly considered as part of the adaptation strategies of the cities. Studies using expert models and methods (EMM) receive a great deal of scientific attention. Considering EMM increasing use, this study aims to perform an analysis of the repor...
Purpose
In urban areas, soil functions are deeply impacted by all human activities, e.g., water infiltration, carbon storage, and chemical substances degradation potential. In this context, nature-based solutions (NBS) are assumed to deliver multiple environmental benefits for soil quality improvement. The H2020 Nature4Cities project (N4C) offers t...
La contamination par le cuivre (Cu) des sols altère le fonctionnement et la durabilité des écosystèmes viticoles. Dans l’inter-rang des vignes, la culture de plantes extractrices de Cu, ou phytoextraction, est une solution envisagée en agroécologie pour réduire la teneur en Cu des sols viticoles. Cette solution reste pour l’heure peu utilisée en vi...
Nous le savons, le jardinage collectif au sein des villes se développe. Or, paradoxalement, les potentialités agronomiques des sols urbains ou péri-urbains, ainsi que leurs propriétés physico-chimiques, sont encore largement inconnues. La localisation des jardins suscite des interrogations en termes de risques sanitaires puisque nombre d’entre eux...
The environmental and health impacts caused by phosphogypsum (PG) make it necessary to carefully manage these wastes. Bioaugmentation of a PG-compost mix with Bacillus cereus was associated with Trifolium pratense or Helianthus annuus for the phytoextraction of metal trace elements (MTE). In hydroponics, MTE concentrations in sunflower shoots are h...
Soil pollution by lead (Pb) is a major health concern due to Pb toxicity. Phytoextraction could remove Pb, but this technique is limited by the low Pb mobility in soils. Pb mobility can be increased by bioaugmentation, which consists in adding selected bacteria in soil to increase Pb bioavailability. Nonetheless, many bioaugmentation and phytoextra...
La façon dont les sociétés prennent en charge la question de l’environnement met en jeu des transactions entre les différents acteurs sociaux impliqués. Le défaut de consensus social sur ce qui est dangereux ou non, sur le niveau de dangerosité ou sur ce qu’il convient de faire en situation d’incertitude et, en définitive, sur le degré d’acceptatio...
Urbanization leads to sealed surfaces that are poorly covered with vegetation; consequently, the amount of water that can infiltrate soils is limited compared to rural area. In this context, nature-based solutions (NBS) are a new way to deliver multiple environmental benefits especially for urban space management through suggesting best practices....
Pyoverdine (Pvd) is a bacterial siderophore produced by some Pseudomonads species that can bind copper in addition to iron in soil. Pvd is expected to alter the dynamics and the ecotoxicity of Cu in vineyard soils. This study investigated the extent to which the mobility and the phytoavailability of Cu varied among vineyard soils with different pH...
The development of more sustainable remediation techniques has been receiving greater attention, as an alternative to soil excavation plan in urban gardens. An in situ phytoextraction experiment with buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) was performed with a 5 mmol kg⁻¹ citric acid (CA) application. Joint experiments under laboratory conditions were con...
Cities are important compelling forces in environmental change because of the increase meaningfully of the global population that reside in urban areas, and the intensity of activities of urban dwellers. In this context, citizens have progressively lost contact with nature, and the natural resources it provides to sustain life. Cities have many env...
Radioactive Cs contamination is a major concern in case of a nuclear accident such as the Fukushima accident in 2011. Remediation methods have been proposed including soil washing, removal and landfill disposal, which have many drawbacks such as high cost and non-conservation of soil resources. Hence, innovative remediation methods are being develo...
Siderophores are natural metal chelating agents that strongly control the biogeochemical metal cycles such as Fe in the environment. This article describes a new methodology to detect and quantify at the micromolar concentration the spatial distribution at millimetre scale of siderophores within the root’s system. The “universal” CAS assay original...
Urban allotment gardens (UAG) are important for: the provision of foodstuffs, social cohesion, residents' well‐being, and prevention of the formation of local heat islands during summer. The soils of these gardens however may be adversely affected by pollution threats and thus create health risks. In such cases, appropriate management becomes neces...
With the aim of improving the phytoextraction rate of cesium (Cs), the effect of Pseudomonas fluorescens ATCC 17400 and its siderophore pyoverdine (PVD) on the uptake of Cs by red clover was studied in soil pots. This work also provides a mechanistic
understanding of the Cs-bacteria (or PVD)-illite-plant interactions by using a simplified experimen...
Geogenic lead (Pb) is considered to be less bioavailable than anthropogenic Pb and exerts less effect on the soil fauna. However, Pb contamination in vegetables has been reported in the case of geogenic anomalies, even at moderate concentrations (around 170 mg kg-1). In this study, we investigated collembolan communities using both taxonomic-and tr...
The interactions between bacteria isolated from monospecific cultures of the marine diatom Haslea ostrearia were analyzed by LC-HRMS and a comprehensive statistical workflow was designed. It served for univariate hypothesis testing and multivariate modeling by PCA on a chemometrics platform, Agilent Mass Profiler Professional (MPP).
Designed to exp...
Purpose
Urban allotment gardens (UAGs) are expanding worldwide, especially in large cities. Environmental pressures (direct and diffuse pollution, gardener practice, geogenic contamination) often result in the accumulation of potentially harmful trace elements in garden soils. The objectives of this study were to assess the spatial variability of t...
We present the first study identifying and quantifying the production of microbial siderophores in natural environments in 2 dimensions. The method used a slightly modified protocol (Andrews et al., 2016) of the universal CAS assay for siderophore detection (Schynn and Neilands 1986) combined with diffusive equilibrium in thin film (DET). The orang...
Environmental impact of phosphogypsum piles in Tunisia
Le choix a été fait de focaliser notre attention sur l’obtention de données complémentaires en vue de travaux de modélisation sur le cas de la co-culture d’une diatomée (Haslea ostrearia) associée à une bactérie promotrice de croissance de la diatomée et issue de son environnement.
COSELMAR, a 4-year project financed by the Région des Pays de la Loire at 2.1 M€, officially started on the 7th January 2013. The project is coordinated by Philipp Hess (IFREMER) and Sophie Pardo (Université de Nantes-LEMNA) and falls under the Federation for Research Institut Universitaire Mer et Littoral (IUML, FR CNRS 3473)*. COSELMAR has also b...
The aim of this study was to compare the efficiency of siderophore desferrioxamine B (DFOB) and EDTA in increasing the phytoextraction of metals in sunflower. A 28-day pot experiment was conducted in a metal-contaminated soil supplied with 200 μmol kg⁻¹ of DFOB or EDTA. Pore water was collected and pseudo-polarographic analyses were conducted to as...
Biocontrol strategies using organic substrates such as wood fibers and biocontrol agents such as Trichoderma are currently developed to control soil pathogens such as Fusarium oxysporum. Nonetheless, such biocontrol methods give discording results, notably because microbial communities of organic substrates actually are not taken into account. Ther...
Although copper (Cu) is an essential micronutrient for all living organisms, it can be toxic at low concentrations. Its beneficial effects are therefore only observed for a narrow range of concentrations. Anthropogenic activities such as fungicide spraying and mining have resulted in the Cu contamination of environmental compartments (soil, water a...
Urban garden soils are a potential repository of heavy metal pollution, resulting from either anthropogenic or geogenic origin. The efficiency of phytoextraction was compared on two garden soils with the same texture and topsoil Pb concentration (170 mg kg⁻¹) but not the same origin: one geogenic, the other anthropogenic. Two varieties of Brassica...
Abstract The marine diatom Haslea ostrearia [1] produces a water-soluble blue-pigment named marennine [2] of economic interest. But the lack of knowledge of the ecological conditions, under which this microalga develops in its natural ecosystem, more especially bacteria H. ostrearia interactions, prevents any optimization of its culture in well-con...
Abstract The marine diatom Haslea ostrearia [1] produces a water-soluble blue-pigment named marennine [2] of economic interest. But the lack of knowledge of the ecological conditions, under which this microalga develops in its natural ecosystem, more especially bacteria H. ostrearia interactions, prevents any optimization of its culture in well-con...
This paper aims to provide a mechanistic understanding of the mobilization of cesium (Cs) by bacteria from soil as part of a soil cleaning step. Whole metabolites and purified siderophores (pyoverdine, PVD), derived from the supernatant of a culture of Pseudomonas fluorescens (ATCC 17400), were supplied to illite spiked with either 10 or 100 mmol·k...
Earthworms are known to stimulate soil microorganisms and to enhance phytoextraction of metals. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that the positive effect of earthworms on phytoextraction performance results from the stimulation of soil fungi that are known to be tolerant to heavy metals in contaminated soils. It set out to assess the...
AimsThe main objective of the study is to develop and improve quick bacterial tests to select the best candidates for the bioaugmentation of metal-contaminated soil, coupled with phytoextraction.Methods and ResultsBacteria isolates (181) were selected from a collection originated from a Cu-contaminated sediment, on the basis of several miniaturized...
This chapter summarizes current understanding of the interactions between earthworms, plants and microorganisms in heavy metal contaminated soil. It covers basic research as well as practical phytoremediation
Role of earthworms on phytoremediation of heavy metal polluted soils
If it is to be credible, the efficiency of phytoextraction used to clean up soils must be improved and the duration of the treatment must be reduced – varying duration according to the land use and economical pressure – on the basis of mobile or mobilisable metals. To make faster the soil cleaning-up, new research strategies are emerging with the c...
Heavy metal contamination of soil is a major concern in all parts of the world, in particular in emerging countries where there is an increasing need for soil for food. The accumulation of heavy metals in the environment can affect the health of humans and animals. This has led to the recent development of techniques for cleaning up polluted soils...
Heavy metal contamination of soil is a major concern in all parts of the world, in particular in emerging countries where there is an increasing need for soil for food. The accumulation of heavy metals in the environment can affect the health of humans and animals. This has led to the recent development of techniques for cleaning up polluted soils...
Due to their location on old urban sites, impacted by human activities or road traffic, soils in urban gardens are often contaminated with a range of contaminants that could pose health risks. The aim of this study is to determine the origin of high trace element concentrations (arsenic and lead) in an urban community garden. Trace elements were qu...
Siderophores are chelators with a high selectivity for Fe(III) and a good affinity for divalent metals, including Cd(II) and Ni(II). Inoculation with siderophore-producing bacteria (SPB) has thus been proposed as an alternative to chelator supply in phytoremediation. Accurate assessments of the potential of this association require a dissection of...
The use of plants and microorganisms to mitigate sediment contaminated by copper was studied in microcosms that mimic the functioning of a stormwater basin (SWB) connected to vineyard watershed. The impact of phytoremediation and bioaugmentation with siderophore-producing bacteria on the fate of Cu was studied in two contrasted (batch vs. semi-cont...
If it is to be credible, phytoextraction used to clean up soils must improve its efficiency and the duration of the treatment must be reduced. New research strategies are being emerged: use of co-cultures with hyperaccumulating plants and the association of bioaugmentation (microorganisms, microfauna) with phytoextraction. It intends to change the...
The emerging concept of sustainable city encourages the expansion of collective urban gardens. However, the old gardens may have been developed on areas where soil quality was not taken into account in the past, during developing periods. This can induce risks for human health. Attentive to the potential health risks associated with consumption of...
Purpose
Sugar beet pulp (SBP) has been shown to be a promising low-cost sorbent for the removal of metals from contaminated waters. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of SBP addition to horizontal-flow gravel filters in increasing the copper (Cu) retention ability of stormwater basins.
Material and methods
Small-scale gravel...
A 70 day pot experiment was conducted for the cleaning-up of a PCBs-contaminated soil (104 mg kg(-1) soil DW) using bioaugmentation with Burkholderia xenovorans LB400 (LB400) assisted or not by the use of tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea). The total cultivable bacteria of the soil were higher with the presence of plants. Real-time PCR showed that L...
This study establishes a new real-time PCR assay (using SYBR Green™ detection) for the identification and the direct quantification of specific individual Burkholderia xenovorans strain LB400 from DNA samples of soil and sediment. Specific primers were designed to amplify a 190-bp fragment of the 16S–23S rRNA internal transcribed spacers (ITS) from...