Effect of heavy metals pollution from roadside dust on some growth parameters of Okra ( Abelmoschus esculunta Moench ) grown in Samawa city/ south of Iraq .

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at Samawa city during the growing season 2015 – 2016 to study the effect of pollution of heavy metals of road side dust in some natural and chemical characteristics of Okra plants. An experiment was included two factors. First factor was three levels of space distance i.e.(20 , 40 and 60 m ). Second factor was two levels of Traffic dentist where two ways have been chose one was a branch road within Samawa city and second road was main road between Samawa and Dewania. An experiment was adopted in Randomized Complete Block Design( R.C.B.D) with three replicates and means were compared using L.S.D Test on probability 0.05 . The result of this study have shown that the higher values of vegetative growth parameters was recorded the plants that have a distance 60m from the road where that plants were significantly better them other plants in all characteristics(leaf content of total chlorophyll 1.59 mg. g -1 Fresh weight , leaves number per plant 66.30 leaves. plant -1, stem diameter27.40 mm , pods number per plant 57.60 pods. plant -1, protein percentage in fruit11.55 % , plant yield, 331.66 gm and total yield4977.30 Kg. h-1. In contract, the concentrations of Ca, Zn, Cu, Pb and Cd elements were 59.85, 12.84. 14.10, 5.09 and 0.51mg. g-1 respectively, which were significantly higher in the plants grow a distance of 20m. Also results were showed that traffic dentist had a significant effect, where plants grow in the branch road were significantly different in all studied characteristics, including the concentrations of Ca, Zn, Pb and Cd elements which were( 61.17, 2.21, 0.95 and 0.0951mg. g-1dry weight) respectively. However there were no significant difference between treatments in case of Cu of fruit. The interaction was significantly different that treatment of branch road with 60m space distance gave the highest vegetative growth parameters, meanwhile treatment of the main road with 20m space distance gave the highest values of elementa Ca, Zn, Cu, Pb and Cd.