అప్లైడ్ సైన్స్ పరిశోధనలో పురోగతి అందరికి ప్రవేశం

నైరూప్య

Interactive effects of copper and zinc accumulation in Portulaca olearcea stem cuttings, through hydroponics

Jayanthi P. Senthilkumar P. and Sivasankar S.

The present study was designed to assess the effect of Copper and Zinc ions on the restoration potential of stem cuttings of Portulaca oleracea to document the accumulation capacity of the plant cuttings at different concentrations of the Copper and Zinc metal solutions and to assess the interactive effect these metals on the biomorphometric parameters of Portulaca oleracea The twigs maintained at hydroponics culture was continuously monitored for 40 days for certain parameters such as root initiation, sprouting, number of adventitious and lateral roots produced, root elongation (the length of the first regenerated root) and magnitude of stem decay. The results showed that the sprouting, adventitious and lateral root development started only on the 14th day of the treatment respectively and the stem decay had also got initiated on 18th day of treatment at higher concentration levels of Copper and Zinc exposed stem cuttings. The stem decay was prominent at 20 mg/l of Zinc irrespective of the copper concentration. Hence the magnitude of toxicity was found to be higher when the concentration of Zinc primarily gets increased along with Copper. These shows considerable interactive effects exist when the plants are exposed to both the metals in an ideal environment. Hence its bioconcentration factor is expected to have promising applications of Portulaca oleracea towards the phytoremediation of heavy metals in the environment