The effects of wastewater reuse on potato growth properties under greenhouse lysimeteric condition

Abstract

In this study, raw and treated wastewaters were reused for potato cultivation in order to verify the effect of wastewater on crop yield, crop's heavy metals' concentration as well as some major traits of potato. To this regard, a completely randomized test was designed with five water treatments and three replications. The watering were as follows: raw wastewater (T 1 ), treated wastewater (T 2 ), a combination of 50 % raw wastewater and 50 % fresh water (T 3 ), a combination of 50 % treated wastewater and 50 % fresh water (T 4 ), and fresh water (T 5 ). The experiments were run during October 2009-June 2010 in the greenhouse of Bu-Ali Sina University. The results show that the effects of treatments were significant on the length and number of stems per plant (p \ 0.05). The number of nodes and weight of tubers, crop yield and heavy metal (cadmium, nickel and lead) concentration in shoots and tubers were also significant (p \ 0.01). The results indicated that the highest length of stem (55.44 cm) was obtained in T 2 which had no significant differences from that of T 1 . The maximum and minimum tuber weights and crop yield were obtained in T 1 and T 5 , respectively. Based on crop yield rate, the watering ranked as follows: T 5 . The maximum and minimum heavy metal values were observed in T 1 and T 5 , respectively. Based on the cadmium, nickel and lead accumulations in shoots and tubers (except cadmium in shoots), the watering treatments ranked as:

Effect of wastewater and compost on leaching nutrients of soil column under basil cultivation

“…The experiment was run for a period of 10 months (June 2011-May 2012), including 5 months for soil preparation (in lysimeters) and 5 months for crop cultivation and harvesting (Marofi et al, 2013). The climate of the study area is semi-arid, with an annual average rainfall of approximately 300 mm which normally occurs between October and May.…”

“…The water samples were collected in 500 cc glass bottles. The used bottles were washed with a 10% solution of reagent grade nitric acid and deionized water, hot tap fresh water, rinsed with distilled water and dried at the air temperature of laboratory (Marofi et al, 2013). Before sampling, the initial condition of soil, wastewater and compost were analyzed as bellow.…”

“…As limited water supplies require careful management for successful agricultural production, the use of non-conventional water resources such as treated wastewater, must be tested for agricultural and industrial requirements (Marofi et al, 2013;Jalali et al, 2008). Wastewater is the only potential water source, which will increase as the population grows and the demand on freshwater increases (Heidarpour et al, 2007).…”

“…The contribution of household solid waste to total MSW is about 62.5%. In 1996, the volume of non-prime water resources such as industrial and municipal effluent waters of the country also was about 3.36 × 10 9 m 3 in 1996, of which 2.5 × 10 9 m 3 were from municipal sewage (Marofi et al, 2013). Composting municipal solid wastes (MSW) and sewage sludge (bio-solids) is a good way to reduce the amount of wastes generated in densely populated areas (Madrid et al, 2007).…”

“…Lysimeters provide a means to quantify nutrient movement and investigate the effects of incorporating the slurry into the soil immediately after application, which is not done in the field as normal agricultural practices (Kay et al, 2005). Lysimeters have been used for a variety of purposes during the past few decades (Kay et al, 2005;Mamo et al, 2005;Chahal et al, 2011;Marofi et al, 2013). It has widely been used to investigate the leaching behavior of plant protection products as they are easier to run than field experiments, less costly and more likely to produce an accurate mass balance of chemical transport (Francaviglia and Capri, 2000;Kamra et al, 2001).…”