ASSESSMENT OF AIRRQUALITY USINGGSEVERAL BIOOMONITORSSOF SELECTED SITESSOF DURGAPUR,BURDWANNDISTRICT BY AIRRPOLLUTION TOLERANCE INDEX APPROACH

Abstract

a b c d ABSTRACT Rapid industrialization leads a great role over pollution. Vegetation can absorb particulate and other gaseous pollutants into their system but they also have some limitation and tend to show symptoms of damages after prolonged exposure. Several parameters including ambient air quality monitoring as well as ascorbic acid, pH, total chlorophyll, relative water content of ten different crop species at four different sites were analyzed to evaluate the Air Pollution Tolerance Index of Durgapur, Burdwan District, West Bengal, India.From the detailed study it was found that the highest APTI valueshowed in (176.14) at Durgapur College Campus, (158.68) at Durgapur Projects Limited, (133.26) at Amaravati and (129.32) at Mamrabazar. Therefore these tree species could act as the bioindicators for pollutants and could be utilized as tolerant species towards combating air pollution.. KEYWORDS : Polyalthialongifolia Nacicasesum Polyalthialongifolia Moringaoleifera Air Pollution Tolerance Index, Bio-Indicators DEBNATHHPALITTT,,DEBALINA KAR ,,PRIYANKA MISRA AND ARNABBBANERJEE a1 b c d IndiannJ.Sci.Res..4(1))::149-152,,2013 1 Correspondinggauthor plants registering APTI value in the range of 1-16 are considered as sensitive ; APTI value lower than 1 is branded as highly sensitive. According to Tiwari et al., 1993) APTI level of 25 species were found to be different at Bhopal and plants having higher APTI value are more tolerant to air pollution than those having lower APTI value. Species having lower APTI value may act as bioindicator of pollution. Chattopadhyay, (1996) reported that leaves respond to pollution and undergo quantitative changes in varying degree in a number of leaf surface micro-morphological characters. The leaves are generally used as experimental material as they take up large amount of pollution. In the current study our prime objective was to go for phyto-optimization of the air quality of the plants as meager literature in relation to application of plants for APTI value was found. .Secondly an attempt has been made to compare the APTI values of different plants and to screen out the relative sensitivity of ten plant species towards air pollution taken from four sites viz., Durgapur government college campus, Durgapur DPL,Amravati and Mamrabazar.

Full text

ASSESSMENT OF AIRQUALITY USINGSEVERAL BIOMONITORSOF SELECTED
SITESOF DURGAPUR,BURDWANDISTRICT BY AIRPOLLUTION TOLERANCE
INDEX APPROACH
P.G.DepartmentofConservationBiology,DurgapurGovt.College,Durgapur, WestBengal,India
E-mail:debnath_palit@yahoo.com
E-mail: ka.debalina@gmail.com
E-mail: priyankamisra@gmail.com
E-mail: arnabenvsc@yahoo.co.in
a
b
c
d
ABSTRACT
Rapid industrialization leads a great role over pollution. Vegetation can absorb particulate and other gaseous pollutants
into their system but they also have some limitation and tend to show symptoms of damages after prolonged exposure. Several
parameters including ambient air quality monitoring as well as ascorbic acid, pH, total chlorophyll, relative water content of ten
different crop species at four different sites were analyzed to evaluate the Air Pollution Tolerance Index of Durgapur, Burdwan
District, West Bengal, India.From the detailed study it was found that the highest APTI valueshowed in
(176.14) at Durgapur College Campus, (158.68) at Durgapur Projects Limited, (133.26) at
Amaravati and (129.32) at Mamrabazar. Therefore these tree species could act as the bioindicators for pollutants
and could be utilized as tolerant species towards combating air pollution.
.
KEYWORDS :
Polyalthialongifolia
Nacicasesum Polyalthialongifolia
Moringaoleifera
Air Pollution Tolerance Index, Bio-Indicators
DEBNATHPALIT,DEBALINA KAR ,PRIYANKA MISRA AND ARNABBANERJEE
a1 b c d
IndianJ.Sci.Res.4(1):149-152,2013
1Correspondingauthor
plants registering APTI value in the range of 1-16 are
considered as sensitive ; APTI value lower than 1 is branded
as highly sensitive. According to Tiwari et al., 1993) APTI
level of 25 species were found to be different at Bhopal and
plants having higher APTI value are more tolerant to air
pollution than those having lower APTI value. Species
having lower APTI value may act as bioindicator of
pollution. Chattopadhyay, (1996) reported that leaves
respond to pollution and undergo quantitative changes in
varying degree in a number of leaf surface micro-
morphological characters. The leaves are generally used as
experimental material as they take up large amount of
pollution . In the current study our prime objective was to go
for phyto-optimization of the air quality of the plants as
meager literature in relation to application of plants for
APTI value was found. .Secondly an attempt has been made
to compare the APTI values of different plants and to screen
out the relative sensitivity of ten plant species towards air
pollution taken from four sites viz., Durgapur government
college campus, Durgapur DPL,Amravati and Mamrabazar.
A total of ten different tree species were selected
for the study from 4 different spots from Durgapur. The
study site includesDurgapur Government College campus,
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Air Pollution Tolerance Index (APTI) is an
inherent quality of plants to encounter air pollution stress
which is presently of prime concern particularly of urban
areas of the world.Since plants are stationary and
continuously exposed chemical pollutants from the
surrounding atmosphere,air pollution injury to plants is
proportional to the intensity of the pollution. It has also been
reported that when exposed to air pollutants, most plant
experience physiological changes before exhibiting visible
damage to leaves . Studies has also shown the impacts of air
pollution on Ascorbic acid content chlorophyll content
(Flowers,et al., 2007), leaf extract pH (Klumpp, et al 2000)
and relative water content (Rao, 2006). These separate
parameters gave conflicting results for same species.
Several contributors agrees that air pollutants effect plant
growth adversely (Rao, 2006).
Reduction in plant height, canopy area, plant
biomass and chlorophyll, ascorbic acid and nitrogen content
in plants growing at sites receiving higher pollution are
some of the common responses as mentioned by Pandey and
Agarwal (1992). APTI is a species dependent plant attribute
which expresses the inherent ability of the plant to
encounter stress emanating from pollution. According to
Mashita and Pise, 2001 there is a scale of APTI value which
indicates the APTI value between 30-100 the species is
tolerant ;APTI value 17- 29 as intermittently tolerant and
ISSN:0976-2876(Print)
ISSN:2250-0138(Online)

Durgapur DPL, Amaravati and Mamrabazar. The screening
and selection of the plant species are partly based on
literature survey of similar work guidelines of Central
Pollution Control Board (CPCB,1999-2000). Composite
leaf samples were sampled in polythene bags, tagged,
brought to the laboratory and analyzed for several
biochemical parameters.To trace the seasonal variation in
the APTI value the sampling was done twice, once in winter
season and the other in summer season. The Air Pollution
Tolerance Index(APTI) was determined by calculating the
ascorbic acid (Mukherjee and Choudhuri, 1983),
chlorophyll (Arnon, 1949), pH (Singh and Rao, 1983) and
relative water content (Barrs and Weatherley, 1962). The
pH values were estimated by using a digital calibrated pH
meters. Ascorbic acid, total chlorophyll of leaf extract was
estimated by spectrophotometric method. Relative water
content was estimated by gravimetric method by
determining the leaf weight under different condition like
initial, turgid and dry weight. The methodology is suggested
by Agarwal et al., (1991). Estimation of chlorophyll is done
by spectrophotometer while pH was determined by
electrometric method. APTI is given by
APTI = [{A(T+P) + R}/100]
Where A is the ascorbic acid, mg.g ; T is totalChlorophyll,
mg.g Fw; P-pH of leaf sample and
R=relative water content (%). APTI index range: 0 to 1 =
most sensitive, 2 to 16 = sensitive, 17 to 29 = intermediate,
30 to 100 = tolerant
Ambient air monitoring was done by High Volume
Sampler by using standard methods. {ForSOx [IS 5182
(PARTII): 2001] NOx [IS 5182 (PART VI): 1975] and for
SPM [IS 5182 (PART IV): 1999129.32129.32].
The analyzed value for all the ten plant species in
four different selected spots of Durgapur has been presented
in Table 1. From the results it was found that the pH of the
leaf extract was found to be acidic in nature in case of almost
all the species in all the spots although a variation exists in
Amravati where pH value is basic in nature. The highest pH
value was noticed in Amravati in the species
and the lowest pH was found in the species
in Durgapur DPL, acidic in nature,
-1
-1
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Litchi
chinensis
Tamarindus indica
Species Ascorbic acid (mg/g) pH Relative Water Content (%) Chlorophyll (mg/g fw)
DCC DPL AMV MMB DCC DPL AMV MMB DCC DPL AMV MMB DCC DPL AMV MMB
Mangifera indica 0.85 82.26 92.23 -6.7 6.7 7.3 -302.45 391.15 430.43 -0.19 0.01 0.02 -
Azadirachta indica 0.78 66.06 --6.6 6.8 --26.56 3.91 --0.37 0.02 --
Psidiumguajava 0.30 34.90 --6.8 7.1 --291.71 86.24 --0.11 0.11 --
Nyctanthesarbourtricis 1.82 ---7.1 ---39.95 ---0.33 ---
Artocarpusheterophylls 0.12 14.96 -17.44 7 7.3 -6.8 529.37 181.68 -196.19 2.64 0.77 -0.02
Polyalthialongifoli a0.99 112.17 74.78 87.25 6.6 7.5 7.4 6.9 195.87 240.25 32.52 64.02 0.10 0.38 0.01 0.02
Tamaridusindica 0.71 72.29 67.31 -4.4 4.1 7.3 -2.91 2.34 2.61 -0.31 0.03 0.02 -
Moringaoleifera 1.78 42.38 -184.47 5.9 6.6 -6.7 13.36 37.82 -28.88 0.26 0.02 -0.09
Zizyphusmauritius 2.48 167.08 --7.4 7.1 --3.44 152.52 --0.42 0.07 --
Delonixregia 2.48 220.61 --7.3 6.9 --0.60 1.12 --0.66 0.03 --
Nacicasesum -221.86 -220.61 -7.0 -6.7 -11.55 -19.89 -0.06 -0.07
Litchi chinensis --94.72 ---7.8 ---18.18 ---0.02 -
Citrus maxima --84.75 ---7.6 ---31.91 ---0.01 -
Ficusrelegiosa ---24.93 ---6.9 ---224.91 ---0.01
Table1:Biochemicalconstituentsinleafsamplescollectedfromdifferentplantspeciesatfour differentspotsofDurgapur
[DCC-DurgapurCollegeCampus,DPL-DurgapurProjectLimited, AMV- AmravatiandMMB-Mamrabazar]
which demonstrate that the air pollutants are mostly
gaseous type, namely SO and NO, diffuse and form acid
radicals in leaf matrix by reacting with cellular water. This
further affects the chlorophyll molecules.
R.W.C is a useful indicator of the state of water
balance of a plant. The large quantity of water (in terms of
RWC) in plant body helps in maintaining its physiological
balance under stress conditions of air pollution. The
2 2
PALIT ET AL.: ASSESSMENT OF AIRQUALITY USINGSEVERAL BIOMONITORSOF SELECTEDSITESOF DURGAPUR...
150 IndianJ.L.Sci.4(1):149-152,2013

selected at the four sites are sensitive towards air pollution
after (Mashita and Pise, 2001). From the correlation
studiesof the different biochemical constituents and APTI
itwas found that APTI is positively correlated withascorbic
acid content but significant both at 1% and 5% level of
significance in DPL andMamrabazar respectively. (Table 3
& 4) APTI is insignificantly related with the relative water
content. Total chlorophyll and APTI shows positive
Relative Water Content (RWC) of leaves is an indicator of
the plants water status with respect to its physiological
consequences of cellular water and it ranged between 0.60%
to 529.37% among the studied plant species. Highest value
was rewarded by Artocarpus heterophyllsin Durgapur
College Campus where as lowest value was reported by
Delonix regiaat the same spot. The relative water content
indicates change in leaf matrix hydration condition and will
generate higher acidity condition when RWC is low. More
water will dilute acidity. From the result it will can also be
concluded that the former species tends to be more tolerate
to air pollution stress while the latter is sensitive.
Tot a l c hlorop h y l l conten t c o mprise s o f
chlorophyll-'a', chlorophyll-'b' and other accessory
pigment. It provides greenness to the leaves and is the main
organ of trapping sunlight and its conversion to chemical
energy. The chlorophyll content is affected by pH of the
leaves and ranges between 0.01 mg fw to 2.64 mg fw in the
studied plants at the selected spots of Durgapur. The higher
level of total chlorophyll content in the leaves of the selected
species at Durgapur College Campus in comparison to DPL
indicates lower air pollution stress. Highest value of total
chlorophyll was found to be in for
DCC and lowest value were recorded in
and DPL and AMV respectively.
Ascorbic acid is an antioxidant system which
protects plant against oxidative damage resulting from
photosynthesis and range of pollutants. Ascorbic acid being
a strong reluctant activities, physiological and defense
mechanisms and its reducing power is directly proportional
to its concentration. A high content of ascorbic acid in plant
leaf is related to biochemical and physiological species of a
particular environment. It provides specific physiological
defense mechanism as for plants internally and its reducing
power is directly proportional to its concentration . In the
present study it varied between 0.12 mg to 221.86 mg with
showing highest and
having lowest content.
Highest APTI value was reported by
(176.14)and lowest in (20.2)
in DGC (Table, 2).
From the results it can be concluded that the tenspecies
-1 -1
-1 -1
Artocarpus heterophylls
Mangifera indica
Polyalthia longifoliain
Nacicasesum Artocatpu sheterophylls
Polyalthia
longifolia Zizyphus mauritiana
Air Pollution Tolerance Index
Table2: APTIvaluesfor plantspeciesatselected
spotsofDurgapur
PlantSpecies
Mangiferaindica
Azadirachtaindica
Psidiumguajava
Nyctanthesarbourtricis
pH
R.W.C
Ascorbic
acid
Total
chlorophyll
APTI
0.233
0.336
0.303
0.149
0.517
-0.714
0.147
-0.181
0.341
0.020
0.177
0.358
0.394
0.686
0.624
0.007
0.681
0.617
0.309
0.985**
pH R.W.C. Ascorbic
acid
Total
Chlorophyll APTI
**Significantat1%level*significantat5%level.
Table3:Correlationmatrixbetweenascorbicacid,pH,
relativewater contentandtotalchlorophyll, APTIof
selectedplantspeciesofDurgapur collegecampusarea
Table4:CorrelationMatrixBetween Ascorbic Acid,Ph,
Relative Water Content And TotalChlorophyll, APTIof
SelectedPlantSpeciesofDurgapur DPL
pH
R.W.C
Ascorbic
acid
Total
chlorophyll
APTI
0.345
0.148
0.243
0.376
0.330
-0.221
0.231
0.085
0.682
0.540
-0.408
0.944*
0.499
0.521
0.241
-0.296
0.284
0.815*
0.000
0.406
pH R.W.C. Ascorbic
acid
Total
Chlorophyll APTI
**Significantat1%level*significantat5%level.
151
IndianJ.Sci.Res.4(1):149-152,2013
PALIT ET AL.: ASSESSMENT OF AIRQUALITY USINGSEVERAL BIOMONITORSOF SELECTEDSITESOF DURGAPUR...

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CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
Mangifera indica, Tamarindus indica Litchi
chinensis Artocarpus heterophylls Delonixregia
Beta vulgaris
24
12
15
Table5:CorrelationMatrixBetween Ascorbic Acid,Ph,
Relative Water Content And TotalChlorophyll,
AptiofSelectedPlantSpeciesOf Amravati
Table6:CorrelationMatrixBetween Ascorbic Acid,pH,
Relative Water Content And TotalChlorophyll,
APTIofSelectedPlantSpeciesoMamrabazar
pH
R.W.C
Ascorbic
acid
Total
chlorophyll
APTI
-0.550
0.467
-0.013
-0.190
0.337
0.447
0.266
0.421
0.428
0.417
0.313
0.161
0.983**
0.665
0.609
-0.604
0.760
0.480*
0.786
0.281
pH R.W.C. Ascorbic
acid
Total
Chlorophyll APTI
pH
R.W.C
Ascorbic
acid
Total
chlorophyll
APTI
0.482
-0.746
-0.756
-0.774
0.411
-0.918
-0.756
-0.892
0.147
0.028
0.865*
0.998**
0.139
0.139
0.051
0.873*
0.126
0.042
0.000
0.053
pH R.W.C. Ascorbic
acid
Total
Chlorophyll APTI
**Significantat1%level*significantat5%level.
**Significantat1%level*significantat5%level.
152 IndianJ.L.Sci.4(1):149-152,2013
PALIT ET AL.: ASSESSMENT OF AIRQUALITY USINGSEVERAL BIOMONITORSOF SELECTEDSITESOF DURGAPUR...