Zafar Iqbal Khan, Zahara Bibi, Kafeel Ahmed and Muhammed Asraf
Agricultural use of sewage water usually have a positive effect on the yield of vegetable crops. However, sewage water that contains heavy metals can transfer these elements to soils and plants. An investigation has been carried out to evaluate the contamination levels with metals such as chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), molybdenum (Mo), lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) in soil, and their subsequent accumulation in Abelmoschus esculentus (Lady finger) at two sites in vicinity of District Sargodha, Pakistan. The concentration of heavy metal in the soil at site-I for Cr, Mn, Fe, Mo, Pb and Cd was 0.35, 21.14, 26.63, 10.40,22.18 and 12.97 mg/kg and at site-II was 0.23, 21.18, 26.40, 10.15, 20.28 and 14.48 mg/kg, respectively. The metal concentration at site-I was higher than site-II except for Cd. The magnitude of contamination in vegetable (Abelmoschus esculentus) at the two sites was higher than in the soil. The level of heavy metal (mg/kg dry wt.) in the vegetable at site-I was (in mg/kg) 14.50 for Cr, 54.79 for Mn, 45.24 for Fe, 13.47 for Mo, 1.72 for Pb and 0.24 for Cd and at site-II was 12.26 for Cr, 47.15 for Mn, 49.95 for Fe, 8.92 for Mo, 1.68 for Pb and 0.19 for Cd. Transfer factors in the range of 0.013-52.17mg/kg were obtained, with Cr having the highest transfer factors of 52.17 and 41.42 at site-I and site-II mg/kg, respectively. The pollution load index was 0.04 for Cr, 0.97 for Mn, 0.88 for Fe, 0.43 for Mo, 2.72 for Pb and 1.49 for Cd at site-I and 0.025 for Cr, 0.98 for Mn, 0.87 for Fe, 0.29 for Mo, 2.49 for Pb and 9.72 for Cd at site-II, respectively. Considering the eating habit of inhabitants, the estimated intake rates of heavy metals from consumption of Abelmoschus esculentus in mg day−1 at site-I was Cr (0.05), Mn (7.68), Fe (0.37), Mo (8.55) , Pb (2.82), Cd (1.36) and at site- II, Cr (0.04), Mn (6.61), Fe (0.41), Mo (5.69) , Pb (2.76), Cd (1.10). The daily ingestion of Mn, Mo, Pb and Cd was beyond the oral reference dose hence, the consumption of Abelmoschus esculentus is not considered to be safe for the people living in the sampling area. Thus, although the practice of growing vegetables using wastewater for irrigation is aimed at producing socio-economic benefits, it is not safe and may not be sustainable in the long, as well as in the short term. Due to increased consumption of vegetables by urban communities, it is important to treat industrial effluents which are significant sources of heavy metals and phyto-extract excess metals from polluted environments to reduce health risks.
Aqeela Salman Abuidrees, Malak Jaffar Ishaq, Chang-En Pu, Noora Abdullah Alhamad, Hasan Ali Alnafea, and Ali Mohamed Almehaizea
The aim of this study is to estimate the allelic frequencies of Bahraini population using the AmpFlSTR Identifiler® PCR kit which includes 15 universal Short Tandem Repeats (STR) loci. The samples were buccal swabs collected from 302 unrelated individuals from Kingdom of Bahrain. They are selected randomly from Bahraini population in a where to conduct this study. After going through the whole DNA extraction, quantification, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplification, Short Tandem Repeats (STR) typing and statistical analysis we got valuable data and results. The most frequent allele types for each locus were: (D8S1179: 13, D21S11: 29, D7S820: 10, CSF1PO: 11, D3S1358: 16, TH01: 7, D13S317: 12, D16S539: 11, D2S1338: 23, D19S433: 13, vWA: 17, TPOX: 8, D18S51: 14, D5S818: 12, FGA: 23). The highest allele frequencies from them were 0.5 for TPOX: 8, 0.3692 for D5S818: 12 and 0.3626 for D16S539: 11. Maximum Homozygosity (H) was 0.3576 shown in TPOX locus. On the other hand, Maximum Heterozygosity (H2) was 0.9106 shown in D2S1338 locus. As expected the most polymorphic loci which had the highest Polymorphic Information Content were the most discriminating ones: D2S1338 (0.9717), D18S51 (0.9668), FGA (0.9640), while the least discriminated locus was TPOX (0.7202), as the discrimination powers (PD) ranged from 0.7202 (TPOX), to 0.9718 (D2S1338). A t-test was applied to the data generated, and therefore it was
normally distributed.