Amelioration of Sugar Mill Effluent Polluted Soil and its Effect of Greengram (Vigna radiata L.)

Sugar mills plays a major role in polluting the water bodies and land by discharging a large amount of wastewater as effluent. The sugar mill effluents are having higher amount of suspended solids, dissolved solids, BOD, COD, chloride sulphate, nitrates, calcium and magnesium. The continuous use of these effluents harmfully affect the crops when used for irrigation. As a result, a higher amount of various elements get deposited in the soil and make them polluted. Since this polluted soil reduces both the crop production as well as the soil properties it was decided to give some bioremediation measures by growing the tree species in polluted soil. The tree species like Polyalthia longifolia, Pithocolobium dulce, Moringa olefera, Tamarindus indicus, Samanea saman, Azadirachta indica and Acacia nilotica were grown in the polluted soil upto 120 days. The treatment in which all tree species grown in one pot showed a remarkable reduction of pollutants. The bioremediated soil showed a good germination of green gram seeds. In another experiment, the polluted soil were mixed with some organic amendments like coir waste, vermicompost, Rhizobium and cow dung to improve the soil fertility and their efficacy was tested by growing green gram plant in that soil. Among the amendments, the vermicompost mixed polluted soil showed good morphological and yield parameters.