Soil's Petroleum Contamination and Carbon Nanotubes Effects on Maize Plant Growth Parameters

A well healthy environment can quietly affect the life quality and human community. In recent decades the need for and utilizing fossil had increased and thus the environmental pollutions including for soil has also increased. Petroleum contaminated soils are not suitable for agricultural, residential and social usage and cause economical, ecological and agricultural damage. To cope with this challenge, the use of additives such as carbon nanotubes has expanded to soil, but the use of these elements has raised concerns about their risk to biological processes and systems, such as effects on physiology and plant growth, and there have not been much studies on this issue. In order to investigate the interaction of soil petroleum pollution and carbon nanotubes on some plant characteristics such as wet mass, dry matter and plant length, seed and maize seedling were separately treated with 0, 10, 20 and 40 mg/l carbon nanotubes at the beginning. In pots containing soil with three levels of petroleum pollution, 2.43, 2.76 and 4.16% were cultivated with 3 replications. A completely randomized design was used in the form of factorial experiments. Wet mass, dry matter and length of shoot and root of plants were determined. The results showed that petroleum pollution had a negative effect on the growth characteristics. It was also observed that application of carbon nanotubes to maize (whether seed or seedling) depending on the concentration of these materials, could have different effects on plant growth parameters.