Abstract:
The present water and land resources are under immense pressure due to the alarming increase in the rate of population, which in turn increases the demand for basic life necessities. Many industries in Pakistan including textile discharge their effluents directly into the nearby water source and cause pollution and fresh water scarcity for agriculture. Untreated textile effluent contains Azo dyes which are harmful organic synthetic colorants and pose chemical stress for plant growth and also becomes part of food chain. Dye contaminated water can be treated by various method including nanoparticles application. There are certain rhizobacteria, which improves plant growth and development under biotic and chemical stress. The present study focused on examining the impact dye contaminated water on maize plant with inoculation of Serratia sp PGPR. Four treatments (treated dye water, dye contaminated water (100 ppm, 150 ppm and 200 ppm)) were applied to CC7 inoculated and un-inoculated maize plants. The effects were studied based on plant growth and biomass yield. Root length, shoot length, and root and shoot biomass, leaf area, moisture content, nitrogen and phosphorous contents were measured. The plants irrigated with treated dye water showed better growth and biomass yield as compared to plants irrigated with dye water at different concentrations. In case of dye water treatments, all growth parameters including N content and P content in maize plants increased in response to application of dye-contaminated water. However, the inoculation with strain CC7 improved growth and biomass compared to un-inoculated maize plants for all the treatments. This study proved that 1) dye contaminated water after treatment can be used for irrigation purpose and 2) PGPR inoculation serves to be effective for improving biomass of maize irrigated with dye contaminated water. Hence, both can serve to be an effective strategy to recycle industrial wastewater and grow maize crop for agriculture purpose.
