Acta Scientiarum Polonorum: Hortorum Cultus (Sep 2011)
PHYTOEXTRACTION OF NICKEL BY SELECTED SPECIES OF LAWN GRASSES FROM SUBSTRATES CONTAMINATED WITH HEAVY METALS
Abstract
In the recent years many attentions dedicates contamination environment heavy metals. For main source of this pollution was considered the industrial activity of man, burning mineral fuels, motorization, metallurgy, and different technological processes. On the pollution of heavy metals be subject particularly strongly the terrains industrialized and large municipal centres. Methods were sought cheap cleaning environment from heavy metals. The phytoremediation can be one of such methods using, the plants to phytoextraction these metals. Phytoextraction of nickel by Poa pratensis L., cv. ‘Evora’, Festuca arundinacea Schleb., cv. ‘Asterix’ and Festuca rubra L. sensu lato cv. ‘Jasper’ was investigated in the conducted experiment. Selected species of lawn grasses are used in lawn-seed mixtures. Plants were grown in substrates artificially contaminated with heavy metals. The aim of the conducted studies was to determine which of the applied lawn grass species when growing in a substrate contaminated with heavy metals will accumulate the highest amounts of nickel and whether increasing doses of heavy metals introduced to the substrate will have an effect on the growth and fresh matter of the aboveground parts in the analysed species of lawn grasses. Increasing doses of heavy metals, irrespective of harvest date, did not have a significant effect on fresh matter of the aboveground parts of analysed grasses. Among the investigated grass species, growing in substrates contaminated with heavy metals, Poa pratensis L. ‘Evora’ and Festuca arundinacea Schleb. ‘Asterix’ turned out to be species exhibiting the highest capacity to accumulate nickel. The smallest mean content of nickel was found in Festuca rubra L. sensu lato ‘Jasper’. Analysed lawn grasses species, particularly Poa pratensis L. ‘Evora’ and Festuca arundinacea Schleb. ‘Asterix’, may be used in the management of soils contaminated with nickel.
