Nickel may not grow on trees—but there’s a chance it could someday be mined using plants. Many plant species naturally soak up metal and concentrate it in their tissues, and new funding will support research on how to use that trait for plant-based mining, or phytomining. 

Seven phytomining projects just received $9.9 million in funding from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E). The goal is to better understand which plants could help with mining and determine how researchers can tweak them to get our hands on all the critical metals we’ll need in the future.