Abstract

 A study was undertaken to assess the microbial diversity and enzyme activities and their relationship with soil properties in the soils adjacent to chromium, iron and coal mining areas of Jajpur, Keonjhar and Jharsuguda districts and adjacent to industrial areas as well as ash ponds of thermal power plant and aluminium refinery of Angul, Koraput, Rayagada, Jagatsinghpur, Sundargarh, Bhadrak, Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Cuttack, and Ganjam districts of Odisha, India. The effluents from the mines are discharged to nearby arable lands and water bodies causing acid mine drainage. The soils of the study area are strongly acidic to slightly alkaline in reaction (pH 4.23 - 7.85), non saline, and having very low to high organic carbon (0.15 - 1.88%), low to medium in available nitrogen (N), low to high in available phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). The soils contain toxic levels of iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb) and relatively higher status of available zinc (Zn). Highest available Fe (240.8 mg kg^-1) was observed in the soils adjacent to sugar factory of Ganjam district, Mn in the soils of coal mining areas of Jharsuguda (146.0 mg kg^-1), highest Cr (178.4 mg kg^-1) and Ni (12.4 mg kg^-1) in the soils of chromium mining areas of Jajpur and highest Pb (18.9 mg kg^-1) in the bauxite mining areas of Koraput district of Odisha. However, highest available Cu (9.02 mg kg^-1) and Zn (6.36 mg kg^-1) contents were recorded adjacent to Rourkela steel plant areas of Sundargarh district. Toxicity of heavy metals in the soils of Jagatsinghpur district led to very low biological activities in terms of dehydrogenase (0.186 µg TPF hr^-1g^-1), fluorescein diacetate (0.152 µg g^-1 hr^-1) and alkaline phosphatase (9.68 µg PNP g^-1 hr^-1). The study emphasized that toxic levels of heavy metals in these mining and industrial areas and consequently their uptake in to the plant system is very much harmful to the livestock and human beings and there is an urgent need to advocate the people in these areas to adopt proper remedial measures so as to minimize the levels of these elements in the soil-plant-animal-human chain.

Keywords: Heavy Metals; Pollutants; Mining and Industrial Areas; Microbial Diversity; Enzyme Activities; Soil Properties; Correlations

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Citation

Citation: K Laxminarayana., et al. “Assessment of Soil Microbes and Enzyme Activities in the Degraded Soils Adjacent to Industries and Mines and its Relation with Heavy Metal Contaminants". Acta Scientific Agriculture 4.8 (2020): 77-90.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 K Laxminarayana., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.