Explosives are toxic, recalcitrant to degradation and contaminate large areas of land and ground water. Remediation of these synthetic compounds is difficult and an enormous logistical task. Phytoremediation is a technique that offers an environmentally friendly, low-cost alternative to current remediation techniques; however, this approach is hindered by the low inherent metabolic abilities of plants towards these xenobiotic compounds and the phytotoxicity of these compounds. As a result of recent advances in our knowledge of the biochemistry underlying endogenous plant detoxification systems and the use of genetic engineering to combine bacterial explosives-detoxifying genes with the phytoremediatory benefits of plants, this technology is now poised for testing in the field and in a wider range of plants, such as poplar and perennial grasses.