Description

Biomining is an application of biotechnology in recovery of various minerals from ore. Biomining is defined as extracting mineral ores or enhancing the mineral recovery from mines using microorganisms instead of traditional mining methods.

Biomining is becoming popular because it is cheap, reliable, efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly, unlike traditional mining methods. The efficiency of biomining can be increased either by finding suitable strains of microorganisms or by genetically modifying existing microorganisms, made possible due to rapid advances in the field of biotechnology and microbiology.