Assessment of bio-concentration factor of heavy metals in Indian soil-crop system

Abstract

Bioaccumulation of heavy metals in different agricultural products in soil-crop systems has fascinated pervasive attention in yester years due to food safety issues. The objectives of this study were to determine the influence of different soil parameters on bio-concentration of heavy metals? from soil to pearl millet grains. For the purpose, heavy metals were quantified in pearl millet grains and corresponding fields? rhizospheric soil samples from different study sites in Haryana, India. The mean concentrations of Cd, Pb, Ni, Zn, Fe and Cu in pearl miller garins were found to be 0.50, 6.74, 3.86, 49.72, 142.0 and 10.17 mg kg?1 respectively. Pearl millet showed capacity to transfer essential metals Zn and Cu from soil to grains while showed a restricting effect to the uptake of Co and Cr. Further multivariate statistical techniques like correlation analysis, principal component analysis and cluster analysis were applied to the data for supplementary and qualitative evaluation of inter-dependences among the studied parameters. Bio-concentration factors of all the studied heavy metals in pearl millet grains showed significant negative correlations with their respective soils? total metal concentrations. The results revealed lesser metal uptake with increasing soil total metal concentrations. Inspite of the variability in the characteristic of investigated soils, significant correlations among soil quality parameters and metal accumulation in grains were recorded. Cluster analysis revealed formation of many primary cluster pairs such as EC-Na, CEC-Ca, BCFNi-Cus, BCFFe-TOC, BCFzn-EC, BCFPb-pH, BCFCu-Na and CdS-Pbs etc. ? 2017, Scientific Publishers. All rights reserved.