Responses of crops for diverse soil phosphorus conditions and potential crops for phytoextraction of enriched soil phosphorus

Abstract

Phytoextraction is an attractive method to extract excess soil phosphorus (P) builds up from the soils. The crops potential to extract an enriched P in soil is still lacking. Therefore, four crops were grown in three different soils with variable P levels (0 to 200 mg P/kg soil) and screened for P acquisition potentials. Total P accumulation in roots and shoot was high with enriched P levels in all soils, for example in soil A at 200 mg P/kg soil, the values were 0.44% for cucumber (Cucumis sativus), 0.40% for sunflower (Helianthus annus), and ∼0.30% for cabbage (Brassica oleracea) and 0.20% for Indian mustard (Brassica juncea). The cucumber and sunflower showed a greater biomass production (>6.0 g/pot) with enriched P levels and exhibited more prominent root characteristics, suggests more favorable for P acquisition from the P enriched soils. More prominent enhanced phosphomonoesterase and phytase activities in these crops possibly contributing to their P accumulation ability under high soil P conditions. This study shows that, cucumber and sunflower can generate high dry matter content and can accumulate greater quantity of P from the soils through different mechanisms and they can be potential candidates for phytoextraction of P from the soil P enriched areas.

Keywords:

• Accumulation
• crops
• excess
• phosphorus
• phytoextraction

Acknowledgments

Authors would like to express their gratitude to the Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka Council for the Agricultural Research Policy for their assistance to conduct this research. We appreciate the support with sample analysis provided by the laboratory staff at the Department of Land Management at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and the Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Food Security (ITAFoS). The editor and reviewers warmly acknowledged the insightful constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare