Dissipation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and microbial activity in a field soil planted with perennial ryegrass

Abstract

Dissipation and plant uptake of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in contaminated agricultural soil planted with perennial ryegrass were investigated in a field experiment. After two seasons of grass cultivation the mean concentration of 12 PAHs in soil decreased by 23.4% compared with the initial soil. The 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-ring PAHs were dissipated by 30.9%, 25.5%, 21.2%, and 16.3% from the soil, respectively. Ryegrass shoots accumulated about 280 μg·kg^-1, shoot dry matter biomass reached 2.48 × 10⁴ kg·ha^-1, and plant uptake accounted for about 0.99% of the decrease in PAHs in the soil. Significantly higher soil enzyme activities and microbial community functional diversity were observed in planted soil than that in the unplanted control. The results suggest that planting ryegrass may promote the dissipation of PAHs in long-term contaminated agricultural soil, and plant-promoted microbial degradation may be a main mechanism of phytoremediation.

Keywords

perennial ryegrass / polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon bioremediation / plant uptake / soil microbial activity

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (Grant No. 2007AA061110), the Knowledge Innovation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Project KSCX2-YW-G-071) and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Project BK2009016).

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg