Shahla Faizan
(Corresponding author)
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Environmental
Physiology Laboratory, Department of Botany, Aligarh Muslim University,
Aligarh-202002,
India
email: sfaizan10@gmail.com
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Publication
Data
Paper received:
05 January 2011
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Revised received:
01 August 2011
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Accepted:
06
August 2011
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Abstract
Cadmium is a highly toxic metallic pollutant which adversely affects
plant growth. A green house experiment was conducted to study the variation
in growth, yield and proline content of four chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)
cultivars namely ICC1069, ICC12422, ICC7589 and ICC4969 at two plant growth
stages (30 and 60 days after sowing), treated with 0, 25, 50 and 100 mg Cd kg-1 soil. Plant growth, plant
fresh weight, plant biomass, leaf area, total photosynthetic area, carbonic
anhydrase activity, yield and proline content exhibited a dose- dependent
response to Cd on four cultivars of Cicer arietinum L. The
shoot and root length showed a reduction of 10.02, 10.63, 12.97, 7.93 and
4.95, 6.09, 7.85, 9.23% in all the four cultivars respectively, whereas
shoot and root dry weight showed a reduction of 18.82, 27.61, 11.27, 44.59
and 10.63, 4.89, 3, 11.94% in all the cultivars respectively at 50 mg Cd kg-1 soil at 30 days of growth
stage. It was a general observation from the results that all the parameters
of plants were reduced in a concentration-duration dependent manner. However,
the proline content of leaf is increased with the increase in Cd
concentration. It showed an increase of 15.66, 17.5, 18.42 and 23.61% at 100
mg Cd kg-1 soil at 30 days
of growth stage. Maximal significant reductions in the growth characteristics
were observed with 100 mg Cd kg-1 soil
in all the cultivars in both the samplings. Among cultivars, ICC1069 proved
tolerant and showed lesser decrease in the growth characteristics, whereas
ICC4969 proved as non-tolerant and showed maximum decrease in the growth
characteristics.
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Key words
Cadmium, Chickpea cultivars, Growth variations
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