Impact Of Heavy Metals On Morphological And Biochemical Parameters Of Shorea Robusta Plant

Pant P.P., Tripathi A.K.: Impact of heavy metals on morphological and biochemical parameters of Shorea robusta plant. Ekológia (Bratislava), Vol. 33, No. 2, p. 116-126, 2014.

A study was conducted to determine the impact of heavy metals (cadmium [Cd], arsenic [As] and lead [Pb]) on the morphological, and biochemical parameters of Shorea robusta and to investigate the uptake capacity of this plant for individual heavy metal. The study showed that all three heavy metals had significant adverse impact on most of the plant parameters of S. robusta, at all the given concentrations of 1, 5 and 10 mg/l. Maximum reduction in morphological parameters is observed in leaf area (92.67%) followed by shoot length (54%) and, root length (28.78%). Maximum reduction in biochemical parameters is observed in amino acid (75.13%) followed by chlorophyll (68.33%) and, crude protein (35.68%), whereas polyphenol and ascorbic acid showed maximum enhancement of 77.1 and 139.8%, respectively. The accumulation of heavy metals was found to be higher in the root than shoot of S. robusta with maximum accumulation being 0.053 mg/g in root for Cd, 0.17 mg/g of As in leaf and, 0.201mg/g of Pb in soil. Concentration- dependent changes were observed in most of the morphological and biochemical parameters, which may thus serve to determine suitable bio-indicators of heavy metal pollution.