Abstract
Testing the quality of heavy-metal (HM) excluder plants from non-remediable metalliferous soils could help to meet the growing demands for food, forage, and industrial crops. Field cultures of the winter wheat cv. JB Asano were therefore established on re-cultivated uranium mine soil (A) and the adjacent non-contaminated soil (C). Twenty elements were determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) from soils and plant sections of post-winter seedlings, anthesis-state, and mature plants to record within-plant levels of essential and toxic minerals during ripening and to estimate the (re)use of the soil-A herbage in husbandry and in HM-sensitive fermentations. Non-permissible HM loads (mg∙kg−1∙DW) of soil A in Cd, Cu, and Zn of 40.4, 261, and 2890, respectively, initiated the corresponding phytotoxic concentrations in roots and of Zn in shoots from the seedling state to maturity as well as of Cd in the foliage of seedlings. At anthesis, shoot concentrations in Ca, Cd, Fe, Mg, Mn, and Zn and in As, Cr, Pb, and U had fallen to a mean of 20% to increase to 46% during maturation. The respective shoot concentrations in C-grown plants diminished from anthesis (50%) to maturity (27%). They were drastically up/down-regulated at the rachis-grain interface to compose the genetically determined metallome of the grain during mineral relocations from adjacent sink tissues. Soil A caused yield losses of straw and grain down to 47.7% and 39.5%, respectively. Nevertheless, pronounced HM excluder properties made Cd concentrations of 1.6–3.08 in straw and 1.2 in grains the only factors that violated hygiene guidelines of forage (1). It is estimated that grains and the less-contaminated green herbage from soil A may serve as forage supplement. Applying soil A grains up to 3 and 12 in Cd and Cu, respectively, and the mature straw as bioenergy feedstock could impair the efficacy of ethanol fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Highlights
The worldwide loss of cropland to expanding urban communities and their infrastructure, to mining, and to areas of industrial heavy metal (HM) and radionuclide immissions is compounded by agricultural mismanagement, land erosion, increasing salinity [1,2], and the use of As, Cd, andU contaminated phosphate fertilizers [3,4,5]
Soil A was elevated in uranium and the gangue minerals, As, Cd, Cu, Mn, and Zn while soil C safely matched the guidelines set for cropland (Table 1)
The geologically related soils A and C differed little in their macronutrient content, phytotoxic effects incited by the elevated Cd, Cu, and Zn load of soil A reduced the straw and grain yield in cv
Summary
The worldwide loss of cropland to expanding urban communities and their infrastructure, to mining, and to areas of industrial heavy metal (HM) and radionuclide immissions is compounded by agricultural mismanagement, land erosion, increasing salinity [1,2], and the use of As, Cd, andU contaminated phosphate fertilizers [3,4,5]. The worldwide loss of cropland to expanding urban communities and their infrastructure, to mining, and to areas of industrial heavy metal (HM) and radionuclide immissions is compounded by agricultural mismanagement, land erosion, increasing salinity [1,2], and the use of As, Cd, and. Land contaminated by mining and metallurgy with As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, U, and. The less contaminated sites were covered by up to 1 m of casing soil and afforested and turfed for (non)commercial use [9,15]. Herbage of 17 crops from uranium mine soils varied in the concentrations of As (32×), Cd (60×), Cu (5×), Ni (7×), Pb (7×), U (27×), and Zn (27×), and modified the cultivar-specific uptake of Cd by another 2.5 times [17]
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