Soil and Soilless Cultivation Influence on Nutrients and Heavy Metals Availability in Soil and Plant Uptake

Nowadays, most countries especially in arid and dry climate zones had experienced the water scarcity problems. In the agricultural sector, freshwater play a major role to supply water for the plant grows. Thus, the reuse of wastewater as alternative water resources in agricultural is highly recommended. However, wastewater is always contaminated despite after secondary treatment. Along beneficial factors, wastewater contributes to the presence of harmful heavy metals to the plant and soil which may toxicity to the people to direct or indirect contact. This paper discusses the effect of soil and soilless culture to the availability of heavy metals in soil and plant uptake with secondary treated wastewater irrigation. The study involves the assessment of heavy metal including Cd, Cr, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn by using soil and soilless cultivation. The accumulation of heavy metals in soilless cultivation was relatively higher than soil cultivation due the facts that soilless media were directly uptake by plants without absorption by soil. The study also found that soil can act as a filter to reduce uptake of heavy metals by the plant. Besides, different growing media conditions had contributed to the divergent influences of the heavy metal availability in plant and soil. If adequate amounts of macronutrients concentrations such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium availability in wastewater, successful growing plants will be achieved either in soil or soilless cultivation. The used of secondary treated wastewater were believed to improved soil properties and thus increased plant growth and productivity. The comparison between heavy metal accumulations in both growing media will contribute information and technique to be used with minimal risk.