The Effect of Pb-Cu Interaction on Ultrastructure of Wheat

Heavy metals are important factors influencing plants´ growth and physiology, sustainable agriculture and ecological environment. Heavy metal research is thus an important topic in environmental sciences for soil eco-toxicological diagnosis and ecological risk assessment. In this chapter, Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) was used to investigate the damage of wheat seedlings caused by lead and copper and the distribution of Pb²⁺ and Cu²⁺ in different parts of wheat seedlings was discussed. Experiments showed that both Pb and Cu do damages to the wheat cells and the metals showed strong wall penetrating ability and migration ability . In addition, many abnormal symptoms were observed, including black electronic sediments surrounded by swelling mitochondria and cristae at the root-tip cells and swelling of chloroplast in leaves cells. The damage to nuleus was relatively small and low concentrations of Pb-Cu could inhibit cell division while high concentration reduced the nucleoplasm. All of the results are in agreement with the changes in plant´s appearance and the physicochemical experiments.