Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Agriculture - Department of Soil Science

The current research work studied the impact of low quality waters varied in their sources of contamination on soil characteristics and vegetables grown in these soils as well as possible biochemical remediation of such soils. Results implied that application of low quality water led to increase Zn equivalent parameter as an index of increasing heavy metals in the studied soils. The concentration of contaminants in Kafr-Elsheikh soil was the highest, followed by Kombora and Abo Rawash which revealed that, total and available forms of varied contaminants were higher existed in the heavy texture soils than in the light ones. In the greenhouse remediation study on Kafr-Elsheikh contaminated soil, five treatments were applied including chemical remediative ammendments i.e., elemental sulfur, rock phosphate, probentonite, prokaolinite and compost extract, and biological remediatve ammendments (Thiobacillus thiooxidans, Thiobacillus ferrooxidans, phosphate dissolving bacteria, Pseudomonas fluorescens and arbuscular mycorrhizae) and growing hyper accumulator plants i.e., Radish and Turnip in both individual and mixture applications and irrigated with the same contaminated water used in the field. Results implied that application of integrated management with radish plant as hyper accumulator plant was the best for minimizing the hazards of contaminated irrigation water.The three treatments which gave the most significant improvement i.e., elemental sulfur, rock phosphate and inoculated with a mixture of Thiobacillus thiooxidans, Thiobacillus ferrooxidans, phosphate dissolving bacteria, arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM) and enriched with compost extract (T₃), combined mixture of probentonite and prokaolinite and inoculated with Pseudomonas fluorescens, arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM) and enriched with extracted compost (T₄), and combined mixture of all the remediative amendments (T₅) were selected to be evaluated under field conditions with radish hyper accumulator plant

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