Phytoremediation of zinc contaminated water by marigold (Tagetes Minuta L)

The heavy metals like zinc affect adversely the aquatic and terrestrial environments. Phytoremediation technique is most effective, low cost and environmental friendly method used to remove pollutants such as heavy metals from both water and soil. The present study aims to evaluate marigold effect in phytoremediation of zinc from waste water and investigate the growth parameters under zinc metal stress. To this aim, marigold plant was used to remove zinc from synthetic waste water at different concentrations (0, 100, 200,300, and 400 μM). The experiment was conducted for 15 days in different steps including plant collection, growth in controlled environment, pre-analysis, post-analysis, drying, separation of parts, grinding digestion, filtration and metal detection by using atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Zinc accumulation was checked by detection of zinc metal in roots, shots, and leaves of plants. According to results, in roots, stem and in leaves zinc found in range of (5.67 to 17.37); (4.81 to 9.33) and (3.3 to 8.37), respectively. It could be concluded that this plant have zinc accumulation capacity and it is useful to treat zinc contaminated site.