article · Horticulturae
Cultivating marigold flowers using soil amended with sewage sludge can enhance plant development while helping to manage waste. Tests using zero, five, and ten percent sewage sludge applications showed that plant growth, crop yield, and biochemical characteristics increased alongside the amendment rate. The ten percent treatment delivered the highest performance, producing a maximum flower yield of 318.42 grams per plant. Concurrently, bioaccumulation assessments revealed that marigolds actively absorb heavy metals from the amended soil, accumulating cadmium, chromium, copper, zinc, manganese, and iron. Predictive multiple linear regression models successfully forecast the uptake of these metals based on soil characteristics, demonstrating strong accuracy. Overall, incorporating sewage sludge into floriculture offers a sustainable waste management strategy that supports ornamental flower production while addressing environmental concerns.
Disposing of sewage sludge presents persistent public health and environmental challenges. Demonstrating that this waste product can boost the yield of non-edible crops like marigolds provides a viable recycling alternative. Because the plants effectively extract heavy metals from amended soils, this approach enables municipal waste reuse in ornamental floriculture while simultaneously helping manage soil contaminants.
This research provides an applied and tested approach relevant to floriculture producers and municipal waste authorities seeking to repurpose sewage sludge into commercial flower cultivation. The findings show direct utility for ornamental crop fertilisation, and the predictive mathematical models could be deployed by soil managers to monitor and forecast heavy metal accumulation risks in treated soils.
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The present study aimed to investigate the impact of sewage sludge (SS) amendment on the growth, yield, and biochemical attributes of the marigold (Tagetes erecta L. var. Pusa Basanti Gainda) crop. For this purpose, marigold flowers were cultivated using three different treatments of SS, i.e., 0% (control with no SS), 5%, and 10%. Multiple linear regression (MLR) modeling was performed to develop prediction models for the impact of soil properties on heavy metals uptake by marigold plants. The results showed that the growth, yield, and biochemical attributes of marigold plants significantly (p < 0.05) increased with an increase in SS dose from 0 to 10%. The most feasible SS treatment was found to be 10%, which achieved a maximum flower yield of 318.42 g/plant. On the other hand, the bioaccumulation factor (BAF) values (>1) showed that the marigold plant was capable of uptaking significant contents of six heavy metals in the order of Cd < Cr < Cu < Zn < Mn < Fe. The MLR-based predictive models were capable of precisely predicting the contents of most heavy metal uptake by marigold plants as indicated by the coefficient of determination (R2 > 0.73), model efficiency (ME > 0.49), root mean square error (RMSE < 3.25), and analysis of variance (ANOVA; p < 0.05) results. Overall, this study presented a novel approach to floriculture by sustainable management of SS while reducing public health and environmental impacts.
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DOI: 10.3390/horticulturae9040447
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