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A comparative study of antimony accumulation in plants growing in two mining areas in Iran, Moghanlo, and Patyar

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Abstract

Antimony occurs locally at high concentrations in some mineralized soils. Very little is known about behavior of antimony in plants. In this study, we analyzed the soil and vegetation of two mining areas in Iran, Patyar, and Moghanlo. Total Sb concentrations in soil were 358–3482 mg/kg in Moghanlo and 284–886 mg/kg in Patyar. Corresponding Sb concentrations in plant shoots were 0.8–287 and 1.3–49 mg/kg, respectively. In both areas, foliar Sb concentrations increased with acid-extractable soil Sb, although the slope was about 2-fold steeper for Patyar than for Moghanlo. Regressing the foliar concentrations on water-soluble Sb yielded identical slopes for both areas, suggesting that the soluble fraction of Sb rather than total Sb is the direct determinant of foliar Sb accumulation. Both in Patyar and Moghanlo, only a minor part of the total variance of shoot Sb was explained by soluble Sb. The major part was explained by plant species, demonstrating that plant taxonomic identity is the most important determinant of foliar Sb accumulation capacity in both areas. The translocation factor (TF) was highly variable too, with species as the only significant variance component. Only four species were able to accumulate more than 100 mg/kg Sb in their leaves. Among these species, Achillea wilhelmsii and Matthiola farinosa were by far the best Sb accumulators, with, on average, 141 and 132 mg/kg Sb in their leaves. Of these two, only Matthiola farinosa consistently maintained TF values far above unity across the whole range of soluble Sb in Moghanlo.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Graduate School of University of Isfahan for providing research facilities for this study. We also thank from Plant Stress Center of Excellence (University of Isfahan) for its support of this study.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest, also confirm that the manuscript complies to the Ethical Rules applicable for this journal.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, 81746-73441, Iran

    Naser Jamali Hajiani & Seyed Majid Ghaderian

  2. Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

    Naser Karimi

  3. Department of Genetics, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Henk Schat

Authors
  1. Naser Jamali Hajiani
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  2. Seyed Majid Ghaderian
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  3. Naser Karimi
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  4. Henk Schat
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Correspondence to Seyed Majid Ghaderian.

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Responsible editor: Elena Maestri

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Jamali Hajiani, N., Ghaderian, S.M., Karimi, N. et al. A comparative study of antimony accumulation in plants growing in two mining areas in Iran, Moghanlo, and Patyar. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 16542–16553 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4852-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4852-5

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