Three terrestrial plant species, oat (Avena sativa ), Chinese cabbage (Brassica campestris cv. chinensis) and lettuce (Lactuca sativa), were exposed to different concentrations of herbicide TCA (sodium trichloroacetate) in a growth test according to guideline OECD # 208. Classical (i.e. germination and biomass) and biochemical (i.e., antioxydant enzyme activities) endpoints were investigated. G...

Monoculture causes nutrient losses and leads to declines in soil fertility and biomass production over successive cultivation. The rhizosphere, a zone of usually high microbial activities and clearly distinct from bulk soil, is defined as the volume of soil around living roots and influenced by root activities. Here we investigated enzyme activities and microbial biomass in the rhizosphere unde...

Currently, measuring enzyme activities in soils or other lignocellulose-based materials is technically feasible; this measurement is particularly suitable for evaluating soil processes of biopolymer (cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin, chitin and others) degradation by microbes and for assessing cycling and mobilization of principal nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. With some ...

Soil enzyme activities are greatly influenced by soil properties and could be significant indicators of heavy metal toxicity in soil for bioavailability assessment. Two groups of experiments were conducted to determine the joint effects of heavy metals and soil properties on soil enzyme activities. Results showed that arylsulfatase was the most sensitive soil enzyme and could be used as an indi...

One Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and two stacked Bt and cowpea trypsin inhibitor (Bt + CpTI) cottons and their non-transgenic isolines were consecutively cultivated to investigate the soil persistence of Cry1Ac and CpTI proteins and their effects on microbial properties and enzyme activities involving C, N, P, and S cycling in soil. Results showed that there were the persistence of Cry1Ac and Cp...

Soil quality is critical to the management of urban green space, in particular, along traffic corridors where traffic-related air pollution is significant. Soil quality can be evaluated by soil enzyme activities, which show quick responses to both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. In this study, we investigated three soil enzyme activities (i.e., dehydrogenase, catalase and urease) along ...

Soil enzyme activities are considered to be sensitive to pollution and have been proposed as indicators for measuring the degree of soil degradation. In this work we found that in three galician soils exposed to various degrees of pollution by tanning effluent, hydrocarbons or landfill effluent, the changes in the activities of individual enzyme did not allow precise quantification of soil degr...

(Received: November 27, 2010; Accepted: February 9, 2011) Abstract: The effect of pig iron slag particles on soil physico-chemical, biological and certain soil enzyme properties was studied. Contamination of iron slag particles altered physico-chemical, biological and enzyme properties of soil. While soil pH increased slightly, electrical conductivity, carbon, potassium and phosphorus contents ...