Metals stress on soil enzyme activities and herbs defense in the vicinity of high traffic roadways.

This study has investigated the impact of vehicle sourced heavy metals (HMs) on soil enzyme activities and plants in and around high traffic roadways near the metropolitan area. In detail, the defense response against HM pollution was studied by considering the commonly available herbs around the roadside area namely Alternanthera paronychioides, Ageratum conyzoides, Spilanthes acmella, and Parthenium hysterophorus. The study reported that the HM concentrations such as Cu, Ni, Zn, Mn, and Cr were observed in the range of 6.05 ± 0.1 to 309 ± 0.5 mg/kg in roadside soil and 5.2 ± 0.1to 451 ± 4.2 mg/kg in the herbs collected from roadside area. The soil enzyme (urease, dehydrogenase, amylase, catalase, peroxidase, and polyphenol oxidase) activities decreased by 22.56 to 77.84% in roadside soil and lower IC ₅₀ values were observed for DPPH (2.32-4.67) and H ₂ O ₂ (1.59-2.15) free radical scavenging activities in plants collected from roadside area. The flavonoid and phenolic content in plants collected from the roadside area ranges from 12.65 ± 0.2 to 15.75 ± 0.3 mg quercitin/g and 0.61 ± 0.04 to 1.16 ± 0.1 mg gallic acid/g respectively while in plant collected from the control areas ranges from 7.96 ± 0.1 to 11.24 ± 0.05 and 0.47 ± 0.01 to 0.61 ± 0.1. In addition, the contamination factor (CF) (1.53-11.92) and geo-accumulation index (I _geo ) (0.031-2.99) in soil and bioaccumulation factor (BAF) (0.72-2.73) of Cu, Ni, Zn, Mn, and Crin plants indicated that the soil and plants growing along the highway were heavily contaminated with HM. Finally, Pearson correlation matrix confirmed the inhibition effect of HM on soil enzymatic activities and enzymatic defense of plants in response to the HM stress.
(© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)