Comparison of Phytoremediation of Cadmium and Nickel from Contaminated Soil by Vetiveria

Abstract- Industrial waste is one of the most important sources of contamination in the surface environment. The impact of heavy metals in soils, plants, animals and humans is due to the unabated expansion of toxic effects. The toxic wastes generated are treated by physicochemical processes in which “Bioremediation ” is the microbial clean up approach. Plant based remediation (Phytoremediation) is an emerging biotechnological tool, for cleaning metal polluted or contaminated soil. The present study deals with phytoremediation of metal polluted soil collected from Delhi and surrounding areas utilizing Vetiver grass, which is one of the best “Hyperaccumulators ” for the phytoremediation of metal polluted sites. Vetiveria zizanioides (Linn) Nash) were grown in three types of experimental plots containing sterilized soil with a known quantity of Cd and Ni salts as present in polluted soils (i) Control without any kind of AM spores, (ii) AM inoculum prepared from spores extracted from non Cd and Ni polluted soils,(iii) AM inoculum prepared from spores extracted from Cd and Ni polluted soils. Plants were observed for their growth and harvested after 3 months. The soil and plant samples were analyzed for cadmium (Cd) and nickel (Ni) using Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry (AAS) at regular intervals i.e. every 15 days till harvesting of experimental plant. The results indicated that roots and shoots taken from plot II showed maximum uptake of Cadmium then Nickel in comparison to roots and shoots taken from plot I and plot III. Pytoremediation is found to be cost effective and highly efficient in remediating the heavy metal polluted sites