The impacts of heavy metals on oxidative stress and growth of spring barley

Abstract

Oxidative stress is accepted to play a significant role in stress symptoms, caused by different stressors in a variety of organisms. In this study seedlings of spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) were exposed to a wide range of copper, zinc, chromium, nickel, lead and cadmium concentrations in order to determine the relationships between heavy metals-induced oxidative stress and plant growth inhibition. All investigated heavy metals induced an essential increase in lipid peroxidation and a reduction of dry biomass along with an increase in metal concentration in the nutrient solution. A very close and statistically significant exponential relationship between lipid peroxidation and growth inhibition was detected in this study. According to the results of analysis of variance (ANOVA), the intensity of nonspecific oxidative stress is identified as the main factor of barley growth inhibition, explaining 75% of total variance. Almost 10% of growth inhibition is attributed to the specific impact of heavy metals. The most pronounced increase of malondialdehyde content and growth inhibition was observed in Cu and Cd treatments, whereas the lowest changes in observed indicators were detected after exposure to Zn and Pb.

Effects of lead on tolerance, bioaccumulation, and antioxidative defense system of green algae, Cladophora

“…Biosorption onto living or non-living biomass, such as fungi, bacteria, yeast, moss, aquatic plants, and algae (Tien, 2002;Akar and Tunali, 2006;Sari and Tuzen, 2008;Wang and Chen, 2009), can be a feasible method for Pb(II) removal. Juknys et al (2012) examined the effects of HM on the oxidative stress and growth of spring barley. Major green algae can be particularly useful (Hamdy, 2000;Pavasant et al, 2006) because they are fairly abundant in many regions of the world, as well as efficiently minimize secondary wastes and can be utilized as low-cost materials (Montazer-Rahmati et al, 2011;Bulgariu and Bulgariu, 2012).…”

Lead (Pb) toxicity effect on physio-anatomy of bead-tree, jatropha, castor bean and Philippine-tung grown in water culture

“…Philippine-tung underwent the largest chlorophyll reduction because the initial chlorophyll content was very high compared to that of other species, while under the highest Pb treatment, chlorophyll content of all the species was almost similar except bead-tree that had the highest chlorophyll content. The decrease of chlorophyll content as the response of heavy metal stress has been reported by many authors for several species such as Phaseolus vulgaris (Hamid et al 2010), cotton (Bharwana et al 2014), maize (Figlioli et al 2016) and spring barley (Juknys et al 2012). The decrease in chlorophyll content due to Pb toxicity also caused photosynthetic reduction (Hamid et al 2010), which consequently produced stunted plant growth (Bharwana et al 2014).…”

“…This can be seen from the increase in malondialdehyde (MDA) and the decrease in chlorophyll content (Figures 2 and 3). The increase in MDA content is associated to development of hydroxyl free radicals such as Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) due to heavy metal such as Cu, Zn, Ni, Cr, Pb and Cd (Juknys et al 2012). The reaction of ROS with the fatty acid composition of the cell membrane is known as lipid peroxidation which caused the breakdown of fatty acid chains into various toxic compounds and consequently caused the damage of the cell membrane.…”

Heavy Metal Contamination of Soils

“…Besides the deterioration of environmental quality, heavy metals are hazardous to humans and animals and affect agricultural productivity of crops (Gratão et al 2005;Singh et al 2011;Espína et al 2014). It has been demonstrated that heavy metal-induced oxidative stress in plants disturbs the balance between oxidants and antioxidants in the cells (Upadhyaya et al 2010;Juknys et al 2012). These pollutants can be transferred to the food chain from the soil and affect human health .…”