Volume 59, Issue 327, March 2023

The effects of nickel toxicity on seedling growth of Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilezek

Amber Anjum, Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, Muhammad Shafiq^♦

Department of Botany, University of Karachi, Karachi, 75270, Pakistan

^♦Corresponding author
Department of Botany, University of Karachi, Karachi, 75270 Pakistan
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0488-8946

ABSTRACT

Nickel is a trace element and required in small quantity for plant growth. The rapid industrialization, automobile, anthropogenic, society developmental activities entering different types of pollutants in environment and producing variable types of toxic effects on quality of air, water and soil. The addition of many heavy metals in environment and impact on agricultural crop cover has attracted widespread attention in developed and developing countries. The high concentration of nickel produced phytotoxic effect on plant growth and little work is done on this aspect in developing countries. Therefore, this paper describes the effects of nickel salt on the seedling growth performances of legume crop, Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilezek. The results of this pot experiment showed that Nickel (Ni) element treatment at 100 mM was found highly sensitive for seedling growth performance of mung bean. The treatment of different concentration of nickel at 25 to 100 mM affected seedling height, leaf length, leaf breadth and leaf area of mung bean as compared to control (without nickel). Nickel treatment at all concentrations produced less harmful effects on shoot growth as compared to root growth of mung bean. The seedlings of mung bean showed high tolerance indices 111.20% in response to nickel treatment at 50%. The seedlings of mung bean showed decrease in percentage of tolerance indices at 75% of nickel treatment as compared to control.

Keywords: Dry weight, fresh weight, germination, green gram, root, seedling length

Discovery, 2023, 59, e25d1025

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Published: March 2023