Environmental Pollution, A Threat to Photosynthesis in Healthy Plants

Abstract

Environmental pollutants, in atmosphere depend upon the source, strength, meteorological conditions and topography and effect the flora and fauna. Photosynthesis, which is the main necessity for plants to maintain their metabolic process, grow in size and for their reproduction, is directly or indirectly affected by manmade pollution. This synthetic pollution includes industrial discharge and vehicular exhaust, throws many toxic elements in air, water and soil in industrialized zone. To investigate this effect leave were collected from sunny, semi-shady and shady side of different trees at varying distance from industrial area and busy road and analyzed for various Photosynthetic pigments. The results show that average value of total chlorophyll varied in the range of 23-39mg/g, chlorophyll a, 5-19.6mg/g and b in the range of 5.6-20.3mWg 'and carotene contents in the range of 17.641.3mg/g of the sample taken depending upon the type of the plant and the distance from industries and busy road. These values were in decreasing order of sunny > semi-shady > shady leaves. The concentration of all pigments increased as the distance from the industrial area and busy road increased. These values were comparatively lower as compared to the value in non-polluted areas. The soil and water samples from different sites around the trees in environmentally polluted and non polluted areas were also analyzed.