The Stress Response and Remediation of Plant on Oil-Contaminated Soil

Abstract

Oil pollution is seriously harmful to soil environment and human health. In order to verify the physiological and biochemical response of phytoremediation to oil-contaminated soil and test the relationship between the soil activity and the rate of oil degradation, in the present study, alfalfa, ryegrass, marigold and cosmos are used as the test plants. Through observing the morphological differences, such as germination rate, seedling height and root length, of four plant species under different concentrations of oil-contaminated soil, and measuring the physiological and biochemical indexes, which including MDA, soluble sugars, free proline, soluble protein and chlorophyll etc, and the change of oil degradation rate during the growth process of plant, results proved that plants could improve self-protection capabilities to resist the oil pollution by accumulating osmoregulation substances when they were subject to oil-contaminated stress. By analyzing the changes of polyphenol oxidase, it indicated that the plants can regulate enzyme activity in the oil-contaminated soil, and enhanced it. Comprehensive comparison of the above indexes, we draw a conclusion that alfalfa is an ideal species to repair the oil-contaminated soiland Marigold is the second candidate. In general, our work will lay the theoretic basis for phytoremediation technology research.