1. Single and mixed chelants-assisted phytoextraction of heavy metals in municipal waste dump soil by castor
- Author
-
Ishaq S. Eneji, Julius U. Naku, and Raymond A. Wuana
- Subjects
biology ,0208 environmental biotechnology ,Oxalic acid ,Ricinus ,Biomass ,02 engineering and technology ,General Medicine ,010501 environmental sciences ,biology.organism_classification ,01 natural sciences ,020801 environmental engineering ,Phytoremediation ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Agronomy ,chemistry ,Loam ,Environmental chemistry ,Shoot ,Microcosm ,Citric acid ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences - Abstract
The phytoextraction of some toxic heavy metals from municipal waste dump soil by castor plant (Ricinus communis) was tested under natural and single or mixed chelant-assisted scenarios in pot microcosms. A sandy loam with total metal contents (mg/kg): Cd (84.5), Cu (114.5), Ni (70.3), Pb (57.8), and Zn (117.5), was sampled from an active dumpsite in Calabar, Nigeria and used for the study. Castor (small seed variety) was grown under natural phytoextraction or single/binary chelant (citric acid, oxalic acid, and EDTA) applications (5-20 mmol/kg soil) for 63 days. Castor exhibited no visual phytotoxic symptoms with typically sigmoid growth profiles at the applied chelant doses. Growth rates, however, decelerated with increase in chelant dose. Post-harvest biomass yields were higher under chelant application than for natural phytoextraction. Both root and shoot metal concentrations (mg/kg) increased quasilinearly and significantly (p
- Published
- 2016