On the Use of Mechanistic Soil–Plant Uptake Models: A Comprehensive Experimental and Numerical Analysis on the Translocation of Carbamazepine in Green Pea Plants

Abstract

Food contamination is a major worldwide risk for human health. Dynamic plant uptake of pollutants from contaminated environments is the preferred pathway into the human and animal food chain. Mechanistic models represent a fundamental tool for risk assessment and the development of mitigation strategies. However, difficulty in obtaining comprehensive observations in the soil–plant continuum hinders their calibration, undermining their generalizability and raising doubts about their widespread applicability. To address these issues, a Bayesian probabilistic framework is used, for the first time, to calibrate and assess the predictive uncertainty of a mechanistic soil–plant model against comprehensive observations from an experiment on the translocation of carbamazepine in green pea plants. Results demonstrate that the model can reproduce the dynamics of water flow and solute reactive transport in the soil–plant domain accurately and with limited uncertainty. The role of different physicochemical processes in bioaccumulation of carbamazepine in fruits is investigated through Global Sensitivity Analysis, which shows how soil hydraulic properties and soil solute sorption regulate transpiration streams and bioavailability of carbamazepine. Overall, the analysis demonstrates the usefulness of mechanistic models and proposes a comprehensive numerical framework for their assessment and use.

Selective accumulation of pharmaceutical residues from 6 different soils by plants: a comparative study on onion, radish, and spinach

“…During these studies, the six parent pharmaceuticals (CAR, CIT, CIL, FEX, IRB, SUL), either alone or as a mixture of all together, were applied on three selected plants (onion (Allium cepa L.), spinach (Spinacea oleracea L.), and radish (Raphanus sativus L.)) grown in small pots (volume: 340 cm 3 ) filled with one of the six selected soils taken from the surface horizons of the following soil types: Stagnic Chernozem Siltic (SChS), Haplic Chernozem (HCh), Greyic Phaeozem (GP), Haplic Luvisol (HL), Haplic Cambisol (HCa), Dystric Cambisol (DCa). All these soil types, either all or few of them, were recently utilized for the studies of Schmidtová et al (2020), Kodešová et al (2019aKodešová et al ( , b, 2020, Frková et al (2020), and other researchers (Brunetti et al 2021;Golovko et al 2016;Klement et al 2020;Menacherry et al 2022b). The physical properties of the fresh soil samples taken for this study (e.g., soil organic content, sand and clay proportions) as well as the sorption and dissipation behaviors of the selected parent pharmaceuticals on each of them were previously analyzed by Frková et al (2020), Kodešová et al (2020), andSchmidtová et al (2020).…”

“…Moreover, the above-described analytical method for soil analyses is already validated for a wide range of compounds (including CAR, CIT, CLI, FEX, IRB, SUL, and their metabolites) and soils (including the soils used in this study) (Brunetti et al 2021(Brunetti et al , 2022Golovko et al 2016;Kodešová et al 2020;Menacherry et al 2022b). The method used for the analysis of plant tissues is also validated for three leafy vegetables (arugula, spinach, and lamb's lettuce), radish (Kodešová et al 2019a, b), green pea (Klement et al 2020), spinach (Kodešová et al 2019a), and others (Brunetti et al 2021(Brunetti et al , 2022. Despite this fact, the method was initially tested at a fortification level of 100 ng g −1 and 1000 ng g −1 for soils and plants, respectively (Table S7).…”

“…It is a known fact that the molecules, including pharmaceuticals, from soil can be taken up by plants via their transpiration stream (Brunetti et al 2022;Dodgen et al 2015;Kodešová et al 2019a, b;Kumar and Gupta 2016). These molecules might be then transported across the plant cells, accumulated on the edible plant parts (led to their entrance into food chain), or even metabolized into structurally similar molecules with unknown toxicological effects (Ben Responsible Editor: Elena Maestri Mordechay et al 2022;Brunetti et al 2021;Klampfl 2019;Kodešová et al 2019a, b;Wu et al 2010). This important environmental scenario is, however, very little explored by the scientific community, which necessitates extensive experimental efforts to fully understand their environmental implications.…”

“…A number of physical and chemical parameters, such as the ionic strength and molecular mass of the molecule, its hydrophobicity and solubility, lipophilicity and ionization behavior (e.g., dissociation constant-pK a ), pH of the environment, and its susceptibility towards various processes including sorption and biodegradation, are known to influence the potential transport of a molecule from the external environment into the plant roots and other organelles (Collins et al 2006(Collins et al , 2011Kurade et al 2021). Moreover, this process is also identified as plant and soil dependent (Brunetti et al 2021;Klement et al 2020;Kodešová et al 2019b;Miller et al 2016). It is, thus, expected that the pharmaceuticals with unique structural features might be variably taken up by different plants grown in different soil environments (Ben Mordechay et al 2022).…”

Plant Uptake of Trace Organic Contaminants in Effluent-Dominated Streams: An Overlooked Terrestrial Exposure Pathway

“…Trace organic contaminants can undergo uptake and translocation when plants rely on municipal wastewater effluent as their main water source. For example, uptake of trace organic contaminants by plants has been well documented in agricultural systems employing treated wastewater for irrigation. − Results from multiple studies indicate that uncharged compounds of intermediate hydrophobicity (i.e., log K ow ranging from 2 to 4) are most readily taken up and translocated via the xylem. With the exception of relatively volatile compounds (e.g., trichloroethylene), translocated trace organic contaminants and/or their metabolites tend to accumulate in leaves, stems, fruits, seeds, and pollen. − …”