The contamination of agricultural soils with toxic metals is of major environmental anxiety and noteworthy hazard to natural life on the earth. Heavy metals affect the physico chemical properties of ...soil, yield and biomass of crops. Since toxic metals are non-decomposable and accumulated in the natural environment and subsequently enter into the food chain. The, remediation of toxic metals from contaminated soil is of challenging task for researchers. Several traditional methods have been used to alleviate the toxicity of metals but these techniques are expensive. In contrast, phytoremediation is now recognized as an appropriate green techniques in which plants and associated soil microbes are used to lessen the concentrations of toxic metals in contaminated sites. The roots of the plants stabilize the contaminated soil and inhibits the mobilization of toxic metals. The phytoremediation is done in place, saving transportation and offsite processing costs. The success of phytoremediation depends upon the site, selection of plant species and availability of toxic metals for uptake. It is a cost effective plants based method for alleviation of mainly toxic metals and organic pollutants. This article thoroughly discuss the challenges, opportunities and future perspectives in phytoremediation of toxic metals from contaminated sites.
•Contamination of agricultural land is a severe environmental concern.•Phytoremediation is a novel technology for clean-up of toxic metals contaminated sites.•Phytoremediation efficiency of non-hyper accumulator plants can be enhanced by using chelators, biochar and microbes.
Biomass burning, a recurring global phenomenon is also considered an environmental menace, making headlines every year in India with onset of autumn months. Agriculture is demographically the ...broadest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic fabric of India. Hence, disposal of crop residue is done mainly by burning leading to deterioration of air quality. Residue burning in parts of India is blamed for changing air quality in nearby cities. The spatial distribution of these emissions has always been a challenge due to various data constraints. We hereby present a comprehensive spatially resolved seasonal high resolution gridded (∼10 km × ∼10 km) emission inventory of major pollutants from crop residue burning source in India for the latest year 2018. The winter months contributes almost around ∼50% of total emission followed by summer (∼48%), which is the prime cause of changing air quality in nearby cities. Among all the crops; rice, wheat, maize and sugarcane accounts ∼90% of total PM10 load in the country. The estimated emission for PM2.5, PM10, BC and OC, CO, NOx, SO2, VOC, CH4 and CO2 are found to 990.68 Gg/yr, 1231.26 Gg/yr, 123.33 Gg/yr, 410.99 Gg/yr, 11208.18 Gg/yr, 484.55 Gg/yr, 144.66 Gg/yr, 1282.95 Gg/yr, 785.56 Gg/yr and 262051.06 Gg/yr respectively. The cropping pattern and its role in different geographic regions are analysed to identify all potential emission hotspots regions scattered across the country. The developed gridded emissions inventory is envisaged to serve as an important input to regional atmospheric chemistry transport model to better quantify its contribution in deteriorating air quality in various regions of India, paving the way to policy makers to better plan the mitigation and control strategies. The developed fundamental tool is likely to be useful for air quality management.
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•The bottom-up approach based gridded emission inventory of PM from residue burning is developed.•The Indo-Gangetic Plain region is identified as emission hotspot due to varying cropping window.•PM2.5 and PM10 crop burning emission are estimated for India as 990.68 Gg/yr and 1231.26 Gg/yr in 2018 respectively.•The maximum emission is found to be generated during winter months (∼50%) followed by summer months (∼48%).•In PM2.5 emission, rice contributes 41% followed by wheat (27%), sugarcane (14%), maize (8%) and coarse cereal (7%).
Crop residue management and curbing stubble burning is of global interest. For every tonne of rice harvested, approximately 1.4 tonnes of straw is left behind on the crops and a similar proportion ...applies for the other major crops as well. Direct on-farm burning remains the most common method in India to manage these huge volumes of crop residues. Generating biogas from the crop wastes could be an effective and environment friendly alternative. Biogas is a renewable source of energy, offers controlled waste management along with reducing greenhouse gases and harmful pollutants. The digested sludge when used as an organic fertiliser even completes a sustainable loop of recycling nutrients back into the soil. Crop residues due to their rich organic content have demonstrated excellent biogas potential. Most energy crops have shown methane yields of approximately 300 m
3
/t of organic matter. This gas could be used as a fuel or converted to electricity or even upgraded to bio-methane. To further optimise the process, different types of pre-treatment methods and co-digestion of the substrates have been identified. The current article aims at providing a perspective on the impact of stubble burning and replacing the practice by producing biogas instead, thus, providing information on the potential, limitations and methods for optimising methane generation from the crop residues.
Sukinda chromite mine of Odisha is a heavily polluted site, generating huge overburden dumps. The present experiment was designed to evaluate the potential of two native nodule endophytic bacterial ...strains, viz.
Bacillus aryabhattai
AS03 (MT645244) and
Rhizobium pusense
AS05 (MT645243), isolated from contaminated sites to be considered remediation tool to minimize the effect of Cr toxicity on
Macrotyloma uniflorum
var. Madhu. The two nodule endophytic bacterial strains AS03 and AS05 exhibited tolerance to 1800 and 3000 ppm of Cr(VI) respectively in vitro when cultured alone. AAS analysis confirmed higher accumulation of Cr(VI) in roots and less accumulation in shoots which is dose-specific (bio-inoculant) either treated alone or combined. Complete absence of Cr accumulation approximately 99% in shoots of
Macrotyloma
was observed owing to synergistic effect of both the strains (biochar-based formulation). This study also suggests increased shoot and root length, nodule nos., and leghemoglobin content of the plant at 60 days indicating the plant growth-promoting effects of both the strains. ROS and antioxidant enzymes of the plant recorded decreasing trend in inoculated plants. However, a significant increment in transpiration rate, total photosynthetic rate, intracellular CO
2
conc., and stomatal conductance in leaves was observed owing to dual inoculation. Our findings corroborate the supremacy of synergistic effect of both the strains applied in the form of biochar-based biofertilizer in enhancing growth and tolerance index of
M. uniflorum
cultivated in Cr(VI)-stressed soil. This investigation depicts the efficiency of the two nodule bacteria as a mixed inoculant to alleviate Cr toxicity and making the seeds safe for consumption.
Graphical abstract
Karyomorphological analysis was done in cooking banana cultivars (
Musa acuminate
L.) namely cv. Gajabnatala, cv. Paunsiabnatala, cv. Mendhibantala, cv. Desi-Dakshinisagar, cv. Normal-Daksinisagar, ...cv. Mutant-Daksinisagar and cv. Shankara of Odisha, India. All cultivars were 2
n
= 3
x
= 33 with an average mitotic metaphase chromosome length ranged from 1.20 µm in cv. Shankara to 2.15 µm in cv. Desi-Dakhinisagara. Total chromosome length varied from 39.75 to 71.04 µm. Predominance of nearly median chromosomes found a typical characteristic of the seven studied plantain cultivars in which the total F% varied from 38.63 in cv. Mendhibantala to 45.31 in cv. Desi-Dakhinisagara. The total chromosome volume was found lowest in cv. Shankara (18.46 µm) and highest in cv. Desi-Dakhinisagara (32.24 µm). The interphase nuclear volume calculated ranged from 562.50 µm
3
in cv. Shankara to 1463.04 µm
3
in cv. Mendhibantala. ‘Desi-Dakhinisagara’ with the highest karyotype asymmetry value found advanced cultivar among all with lowest asymmetry in cv. Mutant Dakhinisagara found primitive. UPGMA clustering of five intra-chromosomal and two inter-chromosomal asymmetry indexes revealed the plantain cultivars except cv. Mendhibantala along with cv. Shankara and cv. Dakhinisagara along with cv. Mendhibantala were grouped together in the phylogenetic tree.
The present study aims to identify and forecast the probability of impact due to any oil spill near Paradeep coast, Odisha. Different hypothetical spill cases in different time intervals on the coast ...generate a probability map for oil spills consequences. A stochastic oil spill modelling approach is followed to understand the potential impacts of the oil spill in and around Paradeep, a busy port on the east coast of India. The study considers oil spills at one location on various dates (15 to be precise) spread over the seasons (summer, rainy, and winter). The 15 scenarios with different environmental conditions throughout the whole year are studied in a stochastic modelling approach. The probabilistic calculation of risk and forecasting of possible consequences of oil spill in the model can be used for oil spill risk assessment of Odisha marine environment. The stochastic modelling results of the scenarios showed that any spill near the Paradeep coast affects a large area of the coast.
The present investigation aims to assess the phytoremediation potential of six aquatic macrophytes, viz.
Eichhornia crassipes
,
Hydrilla verticillata
,
Jussiaea repens
,
Lemna minor
,
Pistia ...stratiotes
and
Trapa natans
grown in paper mill effluent of JK Paper mill of Rayagada, Orissa, for remediation of heavy metals. The experiment was designed in pot culture experiments. Assessment of physico-chemical parameters of paper mill effluent showed significant decrease in pH, conductivity, total dissolved solids, total suspended solids, chlorine, sulphur, biological and chemical oxygen demand after growth of macrophytes for 20 days. Phytoremediation ability of these aquatic macrophytic species for copper (Cu) and mercury (Hg) was indicated by assessing the decrease in the levels of heavy metals from effluent water. Maximum reduction (66.5 %) in Hg content of untreated paper mill effluent was observed using
L. minor
followed by
T. natans
(64.8 %).
L. minor
showed highest reduction (71.4 %) of Cu content from effluent water followed by
E. crassipes
(63.6 %). Phytoextraction potential of
L. minor
was remarkable for Hg and Cu, and bioaccumulation was evident from bioconcentration factor values, i.e. 0.59 and 0.70, respectively. The present phytoremediation approach was considered more effective than conventional chemical treatment method for removing toxic contaminants from paper mill effluent.
For breeding of salinity tolerant rice, halophytic species
Oryza coarctata
is considered as a valuable resource. Non-availability of molecular markers in the species is a major limitation and ...identification of markers applicable with wider gene pool will be resource-saving. Even after the recent advancement in high throughput genotyping techniques, sequence-tagged microsatellite sites (STMS) markers are considered as valuable resource for pre-breeding, especially when usable for a large number of species. Using a novel bioinformatics pipeline for cross transferable marker identification, whole genome sequences of nine
Oryza
species were surveyed with 23,499 STMS markers of rice. With this highly reproducible strategy, band sizes or polymorphism prediction among different species is possible before in-vitro validation. Only 359 STMS markers were cross-transferable to
O. coarctata
and 77 of those were common with
O. sativa
complex. These core markers were distributed over 11 chromosomes and nearly 76% were located within various genes of
Oryza
. The markers also showed unique genome specific polymorphism pattern with high levels of inter- and intraspecific variations in “AA” genome and complete absence of intra- or inter-population variations in
O. coarctata
(KKLL). The numbers of microsatellite motifs and the repeat numbers in different motifs were much lesser in
O. coarctata
leading to the exceptionally high level of polymorphism with all “AA” genome species. Two markers are also useful for species identification. The hyper-variable markers are effective resource for pre-breeding of
O. sativa
,
O. glaberrima
and new rice for Africa involving
O. coarctata
or any other species of
O. sativa
complex.
Manufacturing and mining sectors are serious pollution sources and risk factors that threaten air quality and human health. We analyzed pollutants at two study sites (Talcher and Brajrajnagar) in ...Odisha, an area exposed to industrial emissions, in the pre-COVID-19 year (2019) and consecutive pandemic years, including lockdowns (2020 and 2021). We observed that the annual data for pollutant concentration increased at Talcher: PM2.5 (7–10%), CO (29–35%), NO2 and NOx (8–57% at Talcher and 14–19% at Brajrajnagar); while there was slight to substantial increase in PM10 (up to 11%) and a significant increase in O3 (41–88%) at both sites. At Brajrajnagar, there was a decrease in PM2.5 (up to 15%) and CO (around half of pre-lockdown), and a decrease in SO2 concentration was observed (30–86%) at both sites. Substantial premature mortality was recorded, which can be attributed to PM2.5 (16–26%), PM10 (31–43%), NO2 (15–21%), SO2 (4–7%), and O3 (3–6%). This premature mortality caused an economic loss between 86–36 million USD to society. We found that although lockdown periods mitigated the losses, the balance of rest of the year was worse than in 2019. These findings are benchmarks to manage air quality over Asia’s largest coalmine fields and similar landscapes.
The toxic effect of iron in nano-composite and salt form was tested on onion (Allium cepa L.) root tip cells in this study. Heavy metals are core pollutants of the environment but their toxicity is ...dose dependant and has an issue in the state of Odisha particularly in iron contaminated soil for crop production and its food chain associated human health hazard. Plants growing in such an environment are the mute witnesses to these contaminations and crop plants played a major role as carriers of heavy metal. Onion is a biomarker that is used for various genotoxic studies as it has large chromosomes, pronounced mitotic phases in the root tip. Root growth dynamics are very sensitive to any kind of pollution. Iron accumulation within the plants can be toxic at the cellular level. Stable iron oxide/ silica nano-composite (Fe2O3 NC) is characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). An increase in chromosomal aberrations in root meristems along with lipid peroxidation and a decrease in SOD activity was clearly seen after treatment with FeNC. Since, iron oxide nanocomposites, owing to their submicron dimension, permeate into the intracellular space and produce hydrogen peroxide that leads to an increase in an oxidative burst in the cell. To mitigate oxidative damage, scavenging of antioxidative enzymes were found in FeNC treatment more as compare to its salt form. However, a high dose of FeNC found carcinogenic in A. cepa root tip that might have the potential for human health hazards.
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