Cadmium Accumulation Potential of Brassica Species Grown in Metal Spiked Loamy Sand Soil
S. S. Dhaliwal, Parminder Kaur Taneja, Jaswinder Singh, Sandip Singh Bhatti, Ravinder Singh
Abstract
Phytoremediation is an emerging green technology for the management of contaminated soils. Plants that are hyper accumulators are used for in situ removal, degradation or decontamination of pollutant elements. The tolerance of heavy metals is the plant characteristic required for hyper accumulation. Different chelating agents such as Ethylenediamine Tetra-acetic acid (EDTA) facilitate metal uptake by plants growing in contaminated soil. In the present study, a screen house experiment was conducted to evaluate the phytoremediation potential of three Brassica species viz. B. juncea L., B. campestris L. and B. napus L. for the removal of cadmium (Cd) from soils. The experiment was conducted on sandy loam soil in 216 pots with Cd applied @ 0, 5, 10, 20, 40, and 80 mg kg−1 soil and EDTA applied @ 0, 1, and 2 g kg−1 soil for 45 days. It was observed that, dry weight yield of shoot in all the three species decreased significantly with combined application of Cd and EDTA. Cd concentration was higher in case of B. campestris followed by B. napus and B. juncea, respectively. Among three species, B. juncea showed highest Cd uptake due to high biomass yield, whereas B. napus showed the lowest Cd uptake.