Use of lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) As a parameter to prove the application of the landfarming bioremediation technique

Abstract

The environment has been suffering major problems that affect its quality. The pollution of water reserves, disorderly deforestation, too many fires and the misuse of soils that increasingly lose their essential characteristics for the survival of life on earth. The tailings of the adsorption process are plant biomass with a high content of the fuel adsorbed on its solid structure. This waste discarded in the soil can be removed or mitigated through the bioremediation technique. Bioremediation is a technique for decontaminating contaminated environments that uses living organisms, plants or microorganisms (bacteria and fungi), with the purpose of attenuating or recovering certain contaminants present in the environment. This study aimed to use lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) as a parameter to prove the effectiveness of the Landfarming bioremediation technique  in the recovery of soil contaminated with gasoline. An experiment was carried out with lettuce crops, in bioremediated and non-bioremediated soils, simulating a real field situation, with monitoring of the variables temperature, humidity and pH, in the plant growth period (35 days), followed by nutrient analyses on plants cultivated in these two types of soils. It was possible to observe that the plants were maintained throughout their cycle with healthy aspects, demonstrating that the soil had its bioremediation well executed, making it suitable for use in planting. There was no visual difference between the seedlings of the bioremediated soil and those of the soil collected at UEPB. The results of the analyses for macronutrients were within the normal range. However, for heavy metals, the lettuce samples analyzed, both in cultivation in natural soil (UEPB) and in bioremediated soil, presented levels above the standards determined by ANVISA. Therefore, these plants are not recommended for human consumption due to these high levels of existing metals.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2024.023-022