SUSHILA SANGWAN, SEEMA GUPTA, VIVEK KUMAR SAINI AND RAJESH DHANKHAR
Department of Botany, Government College, Hisar-125 001 (Haryana), India *(e-mail: seemaguptafc@gmail.com; Mobile: 70564 06892)
(Received: August 11, 2024; Accepted: September 24, 2024)
ABSTRACT
Water pollution due to various industries is slightly reduced due to different treatments on effluent to remove toxicants to a large extent before discharging the effluent in water bodies but still pollutants are there in treated effluent but within permissible limits. There is a need to study the effects of these treated effluents on crops. So, five dilutions of treated refinery effluent were made and its effects were studied on photosynthetic pigments, biomass and relative water contents in foliar parts of wheat crop variety PBW-343 by conducting pot culture experiments. Experiments were conducted in triplicates and with sorted 20 healthy plants in a pot. The plants were irrigated with different dilutions of this effluent. It was observed that effluent concentration up to 75% showed stimulatory effects on photosynthetic pigments, biomass and relative water contents in foliar parts of wheat crop but pure effluent showed inhibitory effects. Stimulatory effects on the photosynthetic pigments, biomass and relative water contents might be due to minerals and organic compounds present in treated refinery effluent, whereas undiluted effluent showed inhibitory effects on almost all studied parameters due to various salts and aromatic compounds.
Key words: Effluent, photosynthetic pigments, biomass, relative water contents