Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Environmental Toxicology
Discussion and Results Root and shoot
inhibition
1.

The plants toxicity test has the aim to measure how sensitive the
plants test organisms are when exposed to toxicants. In this case,
the copper and contaminated soil exposition were analyzed and the
test was analysed by root and shoot inhibition.
For the copper exposition the white mustard was used as a test
organism and a sample exposed only with distillated water was used
as control and measure the value in % of the inhibition, besides that,
a series of copper titillation were made in the concentrations of
0.04ppm, 0.4ppm, 4ppm, 40ppm and 400ppm (each sample).
Secondly, wheat was the other test organism which was used for
testing the diesel oil and transistor oil exposition; as well as in the
copper test a sample with control soil was used to calculated the
percentage of inhibition of root and shoot growth.
The results for the length of the plants are available right below:

As can be seen, there are some anomalies at the 0.04 ppm and 0.4
ppm when the average root is bigger than with distilled water, that
is 7.7. Other anomaly is that the average length of the root in 0.04
ppm is smaller than the one in 0.4 ppm. It maybe explained if the Cu
has some beneficial effect in the growth of roots in low

concentrations. Despite that every sample followed the expected

result, decreasing in size when increasing concentration.
Comparing the growth of shoots, the only anomaly was observed in
toxicant concentration of 4 ppm. The other averages show that
increasing the concentration, the growth is inhibited.
The results for the length of the wheat exposed to contaminated soil
are available as well:

In this case, the soil contaminated with trans. oil was more toxic
than the diesel exposed soil because, as we can see, there was no
growth in presence of Trans. Oil.
Based on these data, we could come up with a concentration
response curve for the copper concentration and the values of EC20
and EC50 which indicates in what concentration the inhibition of
growth is equal 20% and 50%. On the next page can be found the
concentration responses curves of root and shoot for Cu (ppm):

(ppm)
EC20
EC50

Root
1.6
4.0

Shoot
10.2
20.5

Those were the calculated values at the plotted graphs above for the
plants being analyzed. The values of two more plants were given to
us to make a comparison between our values and the others.

As can be seen, the values maintain an average except for the

common wheat that is another type of plant with other properties
and a different sensitivity.
Comparing the EC20 and EC50 of the given white mustard can be
found a relatively great difference between EC20 and EC50 while at
our plant the difference of Cu concentration to get from 20% to 50%
of inhibition is only 2.4 ppm.

The inhibition of root and shoot for the contaminated soil can be
calculated by comparing the values of the control soil plant growth.

In summary, Cu was more inhibitor at the root part of the plant due
to the fact that is more probable that it gets more in contact with the
contaminant than the shoot.
The Concentration response curve shows us how effective is the
concentration of any Contaminant, as the curve is plotted a series of
information could be extracted from the graph. One of them is the
EC20 and EC50, these are parameters that exposes how sensitive is
the plant and if the contaminant is lethal or not.

Discussion and Results - Collembola

In this experiment the test organism used was the Collembolla. It is
a really small arthropod that is sensitive to soil contamination
because of its respiratory system. Two doses response curves were
plotted to verify the inhibition and the dose of each contaminated
soil was used to analyze the mortality of the Collembolla counting
the ones that were swimming. Below can be found the data that
generated the graphs and these response curves, with diesel and
transistor oil:

Since we have
the dose curves
we can extract
the
values
of
ED20 and ED50
which are:
(g soil)
ED20
ED50

Diesel
0,9
14.1

Trans
2,4
4.8

As we can
see,
the
diesels
contamination is more effective on collembollas metabolism due to

the organisms ventral tube that absorbs the volatile chemical

organic compounds from diesel.
The dose response curves were able to show us with not very
accurate results the mortality of the animal with the respectively
dose.