article · Agronomy
Long-term irrigation with polluted wastewater leads to heavy metal accumulation in agricultural soils, posing serious risks to crop yields and environmental safety. This study assessed the combined effects of foliar zinc oxide nanoparticles and biochars derived from rice straw and cow manure on sunflowers cultivated in wastewater-contaminated soil. Applying an integrated treatment consisting of foliar nanoparticles alongside a mixture of both biochars significantly reduced heavy metal availability in the soil and uptake by the plants. Post-harvest soil availability of lead, chromium, copper, and cadmium declined substantially compared to untreated land. Consequently, heavy metal concentrations in sunflower biomass dropped markedly. Furthermore, the combined treatment boosted crop performance, delivering significant increases in seed yield per hectare, seed weight, and seed count per head. The combined use of biochars and zinc oxide nanoparticles effectively enhances sunflower growth, oil quality, and soil remediation.
Agricultural soils subjected to long-term wastewater irrigation threaten food safety and crop yields through heavy metal contamination. Using organic biochars together with foliar zinc oxide nanoparticles offers a practical soil remediation and plant management technique. This approach can restore land productivity, cut toxic metal intake in food crops, and safeguard the quality of agricultural commodities like sunflower oil.
The research demonstrates an applied, field-tested approach for farmers and agricultural managers operating on contaminated farmland. It could enable commercial soil remediation and crop protection inputs combining tailored biochar blends with nanoparticle foliar sprays. Because the trials were conducted in real agricultural soil irrigated with wastewater for fifty years, the intervention is relatively near to practical agricultural application, though scalable formulation and distribution pathways are not detailed in the abstract.
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Contaminated soils can cause a potential risk into the health of the environment and soil as well as the quality and productivity of plants. The objectives of our study were to investigate the integrative advantageous effects of foliar ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) (60 mg Zn NPs L−1), rice straw biochar (RSB; 8.0 t ha−1), cow-manure biochar (CMB, 8.0 t ha−1), and a combination thereof (50% of each) on sunflowers grown in agricultural land irrigated with polluted wastewater for the long term (≈50 years). The availability of heavy metals (HMs) in soil, HMs accumulation in whole biomass aboveground, growth, productivity, and quality characteristics of the sunflower were investigated. The combination treatment significantly minimized the availability of HMs in soil, and, consequently, substantially lessened the uptake of HMs by the sunflower, compared to treatments of ZnO NPs and control (i.e., untreated soil). The application of the combination treatment reduced the availability of Pb, Cr, Cu, and Cd in the soil by 78.6%, 115.3%, 153.3%, and 178.5% in comparison to untreated plots post-harvest, respectively. Compared to untreated plots, it also reduced the Pb, Cr, Cu, and Cd in plant biomass by 1.13, 5.19, 3.88, and 0.26 mg kg−1 DM, respectively. Furthermore, combination treatment followed by biochar as an individual application caused a significant improvement in sunflower productivity and quality in comparison to untreated soil. For instance, seed yield ha−1, 100-seed weight, and number of seeds per head obtained from the combination treatment was greater than the results obtained from the untreated plots by 42.6%, 47.0%, and 50.4%, respectively. In summary, the combined treatment of NPs and both RSB and CMB is recommended as a result of their positive influence on sunflower oil quality and yield as well as on minimizing the negative influences of HMs.
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DOI: 10.3390/agronomy10060790
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