PHYTOEXTRACTION CAPACITY AND EFFECTS OF LEAD IN ROSEMARY (Rosmarinus officinalis)

ORDEN, AGUSTINA; CORTEZ, FACUNDO; CANTARELLI, MIGUEL ANGEL; MOLDES, CARLOS ALBERTO

Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

Jornada; XXIII ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ARGENTINEAN BIOLOGY SOCIETY (SAB); 2022

Sociedad Argentina de Biología

Phytoremediation is a sustainable and low-cost alternative technique that allows cleaning or restoring contaminated soils using plants. Aromatic plants can be efficient phytoextractors of heavy metals. Once heavy metals are absorbed, they can cause damage to metabolism and cell structure. Therefore, plants have several cellular protection mechanisms to eliminate reactive oxygen molecules (ROS) or control their excess, including enzymatic antioxidant components. The determination of these compounds would allow evaluation of the efficiency of aromatic plants for their use in soils contaminated with heavy metals. The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of Rosmarinus officinalis as a phytoextracting agent and to determine the effect–response to stress in the presence of lead. 0, 500, 1000, and 2000 ppm of lead were applied to the plants, distributed in four replicates per treatment. Lead in plants and substrate was determined by atomic absorption spectroscopy. The aerial part was collected for analysis and determination of lipid peroxidation (malondialdehyde, MDA) and activity of antioxidant enzymes catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), and guaiacol peroxidase (GPX) by means of UV-Vis spectrophotometry. The results obtained showed that Rosmarinus officinalis has high survival capacity in substrates with high lead content, but it had low phytoextraction capacity, having determined low quantity or absence of lead in its aerial tissues. Regarding the evaluation of stress parameters and response to stress, no differences were observed with respect to the values obtained for MDA and enzymatic activities CAT, APX, and GPX of the treatments in relation to the control treatment (0 ppm). In conclusion, rosemary could be considered a species tolerant to lead in substrates with up to 2000 ppm, without obtaining a response to stress in the presence of lead. This could suggest that it presents some exclusion mechanism for lead. However, more studies are required to confirm this.