Toxic metal-contaminated water is a major threat to sustainable agriculture and environment. Plants have the natural ability to absorb and concentrate essential elements in its tissues from water solution, and this ability of plants can be exploited to remove heavy/toxic metals from the contaminated water. For this purpose, two plants Veronica anagallis-aquatica and Epilobium laxum were hydroponically studied. The effect of different fertilizers (NPK) and plant growth regulators (GA3 and IAA) were evaluated on growth, biomass, free proline, phenolics, and chlorophyll contents, and their role in Cd phytoaccumulation was investigated. Results showed that in both plants, fertilizer addition to media (treatment T4) produced the highest significant increase in growth, biomass (fresh and dry), cadmium concentration, proline, phenolics, and chlorophyll concentrations. The significant effect of GA3 in combination with NPK foliar spray (treatment T12) was observed on most of the growth parameters, Cd concentration, and proline and phenolic contents of the plants. The free proline and total phenolics showed positive correlation with cadmium concentration within plant tissues. Proline showed significantly positive correlation with phenolic contents of root and shoot. Veronica plant demonstrated the hyperaccumulator potential for cadmium as bioconcentration factor (BCF >1) which was much higher than 1, while Epilobium plant showed non-hyperaccumulator potential. It is recommended for further study to investigate the role of Veronica plant for other metals and to study the role of phenolics and proline contents in heavy metal phytoextraction by various plant species.
Keywords: Cadmium; Growth regulators; Hyperaccumulators; Phenolics; Proline.