Screening the Potential of Different Brassica Genotypes for Phytoremediation of Nickel (Ni) Spiked Soil.

Phytoremediation is a budding and efficient in situ green technique hyper accumulators plants are used to remove pollutant elements from soil. The plants are selected on the basis of biomass, accumulation of metals, coefficient of bioaccumulation (BC) and tolerance index (TI) in shoots of crops. Therefore, a pot house experiment was done to compare efficiency of three genotypes of brassica i.e. Brassica juncea, Brassica campestris and Brassica napus for decontamination of nickel (Ni) from Ni spiked sandy loam soils. The soil was contaminated at six Ni levels including 0, 2.5, 5, 10, 20 and 40 mg kg⁻¹ soil. The shoot and grain dry matter yield of different brassica genotypes declined with the increased levels of Ni application. The grain yield ranged between 2.70 to 1.78 g pot⁻¹ with increased levels of Ni application. However, Ni accumulation in grain and shoot of all brassica genotypes augmented with increasing Ni level in soil. The concentration of Ni in brassica genotypes increased from 8.6–58.4% in grains and 8.3–53.6% in shoots over controlThe contamination indices (BC and TI) were also recorded highest in B. juncea and B. napus whereas lowest was seen in B.campestris. All brassica genotypes showed increase in BC from 11.4–14.1, while TI decreased from 92.9–65.8% with increased levels of Ni contamination. Also, the soil analysis recorded the increased concentration of DTPA-Ni in soils of all the brassica genotypes. Thus, among all the studied brassica genotypes, B. juncea proved to be the most promising hyperaccumulator for phytoremediation of Ni spiked soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]