Abstract
The effect of different concentrations of rubber crumb collected from the vicinity of rubber factories situated in S.I.T.E area Karachi was studied on the seedling growth of Pithecellobium dulce (Roxb) Benth., Adenanthera pavonina L. and Pisum sativum L. under natural environmental conditions. All the treatments exhibited inhibition of most of growth parameters (shoot length, seedling length, number of leaves, shoot dry weight, leaf dry weight, total plant dry weight and specific leaf area) in P. dulce. However, A. pavonina showed improved growth in root length, number of leaves, root dry weight, shoot dry weight, leaf dry weight, total dry weight, root/shoot ratio and leaf weight ratio. P. sativum was the most affected plant as compared to P. dulce and A. pavonina and showed highly declined growth under all the rubber crumb treatments. P. sativum plants treated with 30% rubber crumb did not survive after two weeks of growth. This showed that the soil contaminated with rubber crumb drastically affected the plant growth. The findings of this research could be helpful in monitoring and controlling the pollutant levels in soils of the industrial areas. Such information could also be useful for landscaping and urban planning.
Highlights
Pakistan is an agrarian country with high population growth
Soils of Pakistan are inherently low in fertility to support economic crop production
Discarding the large amounts of waste rubber materials is posing major problems of wastage of valuable rubber and disposal of waste rubber leading to environmental pollution (Tekasakul and Tekasakul, 2006)
Summary
Pakistan is an agrarian country with high population growth. Soils are intensively cropped to meet the increasing demand for food production. Due to high cost and scarcity of chemical fertilizers, the land disposal of agricultural, municipal and industrial wastes is widely practiced as a major and economic source of nutrients and organic matter for growing cereal crops by poor farmers in Pakistan. There are over 2516 industrial units of varying sizes in the estate and includes all kinds of industries It has many types of rubber products manufacturing factories that contribute largely in enhancing the pollution of the city. These industries create the problem of solid waste, which eventually devastates nearby vegetation. The foliage of Senna holosericea showed the highest concentration of zinc at a rubber factory as compared to control area (Rehman and Iqbal, 2008).
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