Effects of soil characteristics in mineral absorption

Document Type:Research Paper

Subject Area:Other

Document 1

Soil texture indicates the various sizes of particles in the soil and influences the ease through which the soil can hold water and air as well as how the water can move through the soil. In this research, the soil from different sites 1and 2 were contaminated with two elements that are Arsenic and Antimony respectively. The soil had a different percentage of clay, sand, and silt that aid in water and mineral retention in the soil. This research was carried out to test the hypothesis, how soil contamination by Arsenic and Antimony affect absorption by roots and leaves. Throughout this research data was collected and the following results were available. The research used different plants like the Kikuyu grass and the Tussock grass in their study since they have different absorption rates and thrive in different soils.

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Minerals are mainly absorbed due to the utilization of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). According to Pari (1910), mineral absorption is depended on the concentration gradient of the roots. During mineral absorption water concentration in the roots is very high and thus a concentration gradient is created since the minerals are highly concentrated in the soils than in the roots. Thus through active transport which involves the use of energy mineral is absorbed from the soil to the roots until the same concentration gradient arrives. Data Table showing data for concentration and % of clay. SOIL ROOT LEAF % CLAY 2 2 2 2 8 6 4 4 14 10 6 6 20 14 8 8 26 18 10 10 Table 1 for site1 representing sample information for all plants with all elements. Graph 1 for site 1 representing all grasses. In this it represents the relationship between the concentration of soil, root and leaf and the percentage of clay in site 1 for all the plants samples, from this graph there is a direct relationship between the variables that is the more the percentage of clay in the soil increases the more the concentration of soil, root and leaf increase respectively.

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This is because clay has high water and mineral retention capacity, this means that the higher the clay percentage the higher the retention capacity which lead to the high concentration in the soil. 4 respectively. In this site one, the soil was contaminated with Arsenic element. Considering a site that was contaminated with the Antimony element and taking again Kikuyu grass as our sample the following were observed. In site 1 were the soil characteristic is similar to that observed with Arsenic the soil, root and leaf concentration were measured as,5010. 8and 24. Generally sand soil have the lowest capillarity that is they have low retention capacity thus mineral move faster through the soil to the lower levels due to the large particle sizes.

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Due to this the soil concentration again is very high and because the minerals are at the lower levels the minerals are able to absorb very few minerals thus the low concentration in the roots compared to the leaf concentration for the Arsenic element. For the other element that is the Antimony element in site one, the same observation was the same as for Arsenic element with high soil concentration and high root concentration compared to the leaves. The same case applied to the same element in site 2 were observations were similar to that of Arsenic element. All this observation are depended on the soil capillarity or the soil retention capacity which also depended on the size of the particles. , & Kronzucker, H.

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