Physiological responses of Ceratophyllum demersum L. to Nickel (Ni) and evaluation its phytoremediation potential
Karima F. Abbas
Environmental Health Dept., Applied Medical Sciences College, Kerbala University, Iraq.
Received: 08 April 2017; Revised: 19 April 2017;Accepted: 25 April 2017
Abstract: Aquatic plants play an important role in heavy metal and nutrient recycling in aquatic ecosystems, contaminants can be removed by aquatic plants and Ceratophyllum demersum L. consider one of these important plants. This study investigates the Physiological responses of C.demersum, native hydrophytes of most of Iraq’s rivers at four different concentration of nickel (0, 1, 5, and 10 mg/l) were applied at laboratory conditions for three weeks.Theplant showed tolerance, but the high Ni concentration declined progressively chlorophyll content, carotenoid, in addition to total protein which was 5.21 % at10 mg/l concentration, while at 1 mg/l concentration was 18.73%. Accumulation of Ni increased significantly with increasing metal concentration, the lower accumulated was (0.79) ppmat 0 mg/l while at 10 mg/l was17.21ppm. The activity of antioxidant enzymes catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) increased markedly after three weeks of exposure with Ni, the 10 mg/l concentration gave the highest values which were 5.87,4.95, 5.24 unit min-1 g-1 f. w respectively.
Keywords: Aquatic plants, Antioxidativeresponses, Nickel-stresses, Ceratophyllum, Chlorophyll
