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Human health risk mitigation from arsenic in rice by crop rotation with a hyperaccumulator plant

Environmental Science and Pollution Research volume 30, pages 12030–12040 (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

Exposure to arsenic (As) from a diet of contaminated rice is a widespread problem and a serious concern in several parts of the world. There is a need to develop sustainable, effective, and reliable strategies to reduce As accumulation in rice. Our goal was to develop and test a simple crop rotation method of alternating rice with the As hyperaccumulator plant, Chinese brake fern (Pteris vitatta L.), to reduce As concentrations in rice grains. A greenhouse column study was performed for 2 years using As-contaminated rice paddy soil from West Bengal. Rice was grown under flooded conditions and irrigated with As-contaminated water to simulate field conditions. Chinese brake fern was grown between two rice cycles in experimental columns, while control columns were left unplanted. Our results show that at the end of two cycles, there was a statistically significant decrease in soil As concentrations in the treatment columns compared to the control columns. After one rotation with the fern, there was a significant decline in As concentrations in rice grains in treatment plants and a concomitant decline in both noncarcinogenic and carcinogenic health risks. Our results indicate that there could be substantial benefit in implementing this simple crop rotation model to help lower human health risks from As exposure via rice ingestion.

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Data availability

The data are available at Mendeley Data, V1, https://doi.org/10.17632/6fg2ds9pnk.1.

Materials availability

The data are available at Mendeley Data, V1, https://doi.org/10.17632/6fg2ds9pnk.1.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Sutapa Bose, IISER, for the paddy soil. MW acknowledges a teaching assistantship from the Department of Biological Sciences, Michigan Technological University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Michigan Technological University, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI, 49931, USA

    Manas Warke & Rupali Datta

  2. Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, 1 Castle Point Terrace, Hoboken, NJ, 07030, USA

    Dibyendu Sarkar, Zhiming Zhang & Sameer Neve

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  1. Manas Warke
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  2. Dibyendu Sarkar
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  3. Zhiming Zhang
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  4. Sameer Neve
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  5. Rupali Datta
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Contributions

Manas Warke: Data collection, curation, analysis, methodology, writing—original draft. Dibyendu Sarkar: Conceptualization, writing—review and editing, and formal analysis. Zhiming Zhang: Methodology and sample analysis. Sameer Neve: Methodology and sample analysis. Rupali Datta: Project administration, validation, supervision, and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Rupali Datta.

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Warke, M., Sarkar, D., Zhang, Z. et al. Human health risk mitigation from arsenic in rice by crop rotation with a hyperaccumulator plant. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 12030–12040 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22985-y

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