Giant reed is known as one of the most important energy plants as a consequence of its huge dry biomass production. It can be used for bioenergy or biopolymer production. Thus, it can replace maize and reduce the production cost of biomass and electricity. Giant reed and its products have different uses in industry. The use of giant reed as a raw material to obtain cellulose past for the production of rayon viscose and paper. Thanks to the flexible and strong of the material, giant reed can be used in the manufacture of fishing rods, brass musical instruments, canes and construction supplies. One of the most important characteristics of giant reed is that it shows strong growth capability in different soils with wide ranges of pH, salinity and high heavy metal contents and can be used for ecological remediation. Giant reed was able not only to decontaminate polluted soils with heavy metals, but also to purify the wastewater and decrease the pH and make red mud safer. Here, we review the available evidence regarding the utilization of giant reed in the field of phytoremediation and discuss the potential application of giant reed combined with advanced remediation technologies in ecological remediation.

The genetic diversity and structure of 4 wild population and 2 ex situ conserved population of Hopea chinensis (Merr.) Hand.-Mazz were analyzed and compared by ISSR marker method. Fifty eight bands were amplified from total genomic DNA with 10 primers in which there were 51 polymorphic, the percentage of polymorphic bands of populations ranged from 53.45 to 79.31, with an average value of 69.82, indicating the presence of high genetic diversity. However, the percentage of polymorphic band, Nei’s diversity index (He) and Shannon information index (I) of wild populations (86.21, 0.3636 and 0.5232, respectively) were higher than those of ex situ conservated populations (77.59, 0.3153 and 0.4597, respectively), which meant that ex situ conservations of Hopea chinensis had a narrow genetic diversity. Population structure analysis revealed that genetic variation of Hopea chinensis was 0.0373, so the genetic differentiation was 3.73% among populations, and 96.27% in populations. Furthermore, the strong gene flow (Nm = 12.8896) would be the main reason of limited population differentiation. It concluded that ex situ population had not yet fully covered the entire genetic diversity of Hopea chinensis.

Begonia is the fifth largest genus of angiosperms in the world, and Begonia handelii is a member of the Begonia(Begoniaceae), and is one of the few species with floral fragrance in this genus. However, the chloroplast genome structure and phylogenetic relationship of this species is still unclear. In this study, the chloroplast genome of B. handelii was sequenced by Illumina HiSeq X platform, and the phylogenetic relationship of this species in Begonia was analyzed with related species. The whole chloroplast genome of B. handelii is 169,406 bp in size, which consist one large single-copy region (LSC) with 95,403 bp, one small single-copy region (SSC) with 20,089 bp, and two inverted repeat regions (IR) with 26,957 bp. The GC content of this chloroplast genome is 35.6%. Moreover, 140 genes were found in the chloroplast of B. handelii, including 90 protein-coding genes, 8 rRNA genes, 42 tRNA genes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that B. handelii is closed to B. coptidifolia and B. pulchrifolia. This study lays the foundation for further research on the chloroplast genome evolution of B. handelii chloroplasts.