Studies on the Impact of Certain Oxidizing Pollutants and Growth Regulating Substances on Oryza sativa var. Tulasi

Abstract

Air pollution has been known to cause injurious effect on vegetation around urban and industrial areas and of lately even the rural environment. The gases produced from urban, rural and industrial environment have been observed to disrupt metabolic processes with subsequent reduction of growth and development of plants (Tingey, 1977; Bell et al., 1979). The oxidizing pollutants like SO₂, NO₂, CO₂ CO and O₃ sometimes act individually and many times are known to work together as one unit, either synergestically or antagonistically (Tingey et al., 1973; Singh & Rao, 1982, Hongfa et al., 2000). Recently some information has been generated in India especially with individual pollutants by Pandey (1978), Singh (1981), Raza & Gouri (1995). A few studies were also carried out with the mixture of pollutants like O₃ and SO₂ (Prasad, 1980; Agrawal et al., 1983; Thompson et al., 1984). Reduced growth and yield, visible injury, decline in biochemical activity without visible injury were reported by Nandi et al. (1984), Huttunen & Karhu (1986) and Sharma (1991). But no work has been carried out with such mixture of pollutants and antipollutants like SO₂, CO₂ and SO₂ + CO₂ + antipollutant.