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Abstract
Soil contamination by potentially toxic elements (PTE) is a global concern. The technologies commonly used to remediate polluted sites are based on expensive and complicated techniques of difficult implementation in the field. Nevertheless, there is an alternative using plants to deal with polluted soils (phytoremediation). However, establishing plants in contaminated sites is difficult given the chemical characteristics that limit plant growth, such as extreme pH values, high salt content, low organic matter, high concentration of PTE, and scarce nutrient content. The use of legumes (Fabaceae) in remediation is advantageous because these plants are able to fix atmospheric nitrogen and thus depend less on fertilization to satisfy their nutritional requirements. In this study the potential use of legumes for soil remediation with high concentrations of PTE is discussed.