Physiological Responses of Some Plant Species to Crude Oil and its Effects Residues on Seed Germination

The goal of this paper was to identify potentially useful plant indicator species for ecological restoration and remediate of oil contaminated soils. The use of plant-based system to remediate contaminated soils has become an area of intense scientific study in recent years and it is apparent that plant which grow well in contaminated soils need to be identified and screened for use in phytoremediation technologies. Therefore, in this study the effect of crude oil on germination and seedling emergence of selected plant species was investigated. The objective was to determine if crude oil exerts detrimental effect to plants during early critical stages in their development. The detrimental effect growth was compared to the control. Oil pollution in whatever form is toxic to some plant species and their environment has been observed by many researcher workers that crude oil affects soil properties and this in turn affects the physiological, anatomical and development of plants grown on such soils. The germination process is a very extremely sensitive phase in plant growth and development, being indicative to any type of environmental contaminants. The effect of heavy crude oil residues were investigated for some seed parameters of Triticum aestivum. These parameters of Triticum aestivum were promoted by different dilutions of types of heavy crude oil (0.0 V/V, 0.5 V/V, 1.0 V/V, 2.0 V/V, 4.0 V/V, 6.0 V/V, 8.0 V/V, 10.0 V/V). And have also of grasses germinated successfully in different levels of petroleum hydrocarbon contamination. The obtained results showed that, low concentrations of both phenol and naphthol caused an increase of germination percentages of most seeds of tested crops. This is probably due to that, low dilutions of these compounds may act as signal for amylase production in the seeds.

Author(s): Ghazala Ahmad Hamaden Mansour1*, Aiad Abdelkareim Akhreim Alzway2, Mohamed Younes A. Hassan3, Idress Hamad Attitalla2

Abstract | PDF

Share This Article