Department of Botany, GC University Lahore, Lahore 54000, Pakistan; Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom E-mail:
Department of Botany, GC University Lahore, Lahore 54000, Pakistan.
Water Sci Technol. 2021 Apr;83(7):1764-1780. doi: 10.2166/wst.2021.079.
Hospital wastewaters are produced in large volumes in Pakistan (∼362-745 L/bed.day) and are discharged without proper treatment. They are widely used by farmers for crop irrigation and induce a phytotoxic effect on plant growth. The study was conducted to evaluate the effect of untreated and treated hospital wastewater on seed germination of a fodder crop Trifolium alexandrinum (Berseem clover) and a food crop Solanum lycopersicum (tomato). A bacterial consortium was formed with three bacterial strains, i.e., Alcaligenes faecalis and Bacillus paramycoides spp., which were individually proven efficient in previous studies. The concentrations of untreated and treated hospital wastewater (25, 50, 75 and 100%) were used to irrigate these crop seeds. To assess the efficiency of treatment, the germination percentage, delay index, germination index, stress tolerance indices, seedling vigour index and phytotoxicity index were calculated and were statistically proven significant. The seeds grown in treated wastewater concentrations showed negative values of phytotoxicity indices (tomato: -0.36, -0.47, -0.78 and -1.11; Berseem clover: -0.23) which indicate a stimulatory or non-toxic effect on seedling growth. Our work proposes that this bacterial consortium is efficient for hospital wastewater treatment before crop irrigation.
巴基斯坦的医院废水产生量大（∼362-745 L/床.天），且未经适当处理就被排放。这些废水被广泛用于农民的作物灌溉，对植物生长产生了植物毒性效应。本研究旨在评估未经处理和处理后的医院废水对饲料作物三叶草（Berseem 三叶草）和食用作物番茄（番茄）种子发芽的影响。形成了一个由三株细菌组成的细菌联合体，即粪产碱杆菌和副溶血性芽孢杆菌 spp.，它们在之前的研究中都被证明是有效的。使用未经处理和处理后的医院废水（25%、50%、75%和 100%）浓度来灌溉这些作物种子。为了评估处理效率，计算了发芽百分比、延迟指数、发芽指数、胁迫耐受指数、幼苗活力指数和植物毒性指数，并证明其具有统计学意义。在处理后的废水浓度下生长的种子表现出植物毒性指数的负值（番茄：-0.36、-0.47、-0.78 和-1.11；Berseem 三叶草：-0.23），这表明对幼苗生长具有刺激或无毒作用。我们的工作表明，这种细菌联合体在作物灌溉前对医院废水处理是有效的。
