Impact of Industrial Effluents on the Morphology of Some Agricultural Plants Growing in Kharagpur Sub-Division of West Bengal, India

Abstract

Kharagpur Subdivision is one of the important industrial belts in west Bengal. Many industries in this area discharge their effluents directly or indirectly into many water bodies as well as soil and agricultural land. In the present study, the impact of industrial effluents, leaching from Carbo and TATA Metalics factory of Kharagapur on morphological characters of some agricultural plants has been analysed. For the study, some important agricultural plants species - Solanum tuberosum, Saccharum officinarum and Lycopersicon esculenta were selected. The aim of this study highlighted the strong emphasis on examining how harmful industrial effluents are severely affecting the morphological characters of these selected plants. The objectives have helped in exploring the study’s goal to examine the key drivers responsible for the increase in industrial effluents in Kharagpur’s subdivision. Similarly, morphological characters of these plants were analyzed and were found comparatively leaf number and size as well as length of root shoot and petiole were lower in irrigated field with effluent contaminated water than that of irrigated field with uncontaminated water. In the present work the effect of distillery effluent on leaf size and number as well as length of root, stem and petiole of three different crops (Solanum tuberosum, Saccharum officinarum and Lycopersicon esculenta) were assessed. It was found that industrial effluents had inhibitory effects. It was also observed that root growth was highly affected than shoot and leaf growth. Thus, roots of the tested crops were highly sensitive to effluent treatment than shoots. Quantitative analysis of some major morphological parameters of these selected agricultural plants growing on land irrigated with effluent contaminated water revealed that there were drastic changes of morphological features observed in respect to the plants growing on land irrigated with uncontaminated water. Thus, in future the analysis of morphological features of these plant species will play an important role in the study of green development as well as crop productivity in urban area.