Abstract
Soil contamination with petroleum-derived substances such as diesel fuel has become a major environmental threat. Phytoremediation is one of the most studied ecofriendly low-cost solutions nowadays and halophytes species has been proved to have potential as bio-tools for this purpose. The extent to which salinity influences diesel tolerance in halophytes requires investigation. A greenhouse experiment was designed to assess the effect of NaCl supply (0 and 85 mM NaCl) on the growth and photosynthetic physiology of Juncus acutus plants exposed to 0, 1 and 2.5% diesel fuel. Relative growth rate, water content and chlorophyll a derived parameters were measured in plants exposed to the different NaCl and diesel fuel combinations. Our results indicated that NaCl supplementation worsened the effects of diesel toxicity on growth, as diesel fuel at 2.5% reduced relative growth rate by 25% in the absence of NaCl but 80% in plants treated with NaCl. Nevertheless, this species grown at 0 mM NaCl showed a high tolerance to diesel fuel soil presence in RGR but also in chlorophyll fluorescence parameters that did not significantly decrease at 1% diesel fuel concentration in absence of NaCl. Therefore, this study remarked on the importance of knowing the tolerance threshold to abiotic factors in order to determine the bioremediation capacity of a species for a specific soil or area. In addition, it showed that NaCl presence even in halophytes does not always have a positive effect on plant physiology and it depends on the pollutant nature.
Highlights
Petroleum-derived substances (PDSs) such as diesel, have become a common soil pollutant [1]
The results here obtained for growth are in concordance with previous studies for The results here obtained for growth arewe in found concordance previous st diesel or PDSs in different plant species
A reduction in growth induced by the higher respectively). This observed decrease was inferior to the one verified for other halophytes concentration tested could lead to an inhibition of the root development. This reduction could be led by diesel stress and could cause the greater relative growth rate (RGR) decrease seen in plants grown at 2.5% diesel concentration and 85 mM NaCl
Summary
Petroleum-derived substances (PDSs) such as diesel, have become a common soil pollutant [1]. Contamination with PDSs can cause phytotoxicity in several plant species [2] Between these PDSs, diesel fuel is a petroleum product widely used nowadays [3]. Soils polluted with diesel fuel can negatively affect the physiology [5], development [4], germination, and growth of plant species [6,7]. Efforts have been undertaken in order to find effective, economically affordable and environmentally friendly methods to restore contaminated soils [11,12]. One of these methods that could be implemented in contaminated soils is bioremediation, which is a technique that is widely discussed to deal with heavy metal pollution [4,13,14]. It could be useful to cope with PDS contamination as an environmentally friendly method [11]
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