SASUF Goes Digital 2022

South Africa ranks as one of the world’s largest producers of chrome, manganese, platinum and vanadium. High concentration of these heavy metals has been found within South African soils in particular surrounding these mining areas, due to improper mining techniques, mine dumps and landfills (residue deposits). Globally, different heavy metals contamination affects about 500 million ha of land.This study will be aimed in studying the impact of low soil pH and heavy metal  exposure on plants in order to generating fail-safe crop for bioremediation of contaminated areas. The initial findings based on physiological analysis, suggested that Chenopodium marule responded positively under both low soil pH and long term Vanadium treatment. However, interesting results came from using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP), in order to determine the level of Vanadium concentration. The ICP analysis showed that approximately 10% of soil Vanadium concentration was taken up by the plant and stored in the roots, as no / impute amount of Vanadium was detected in both stems and leaves. Hence, raising many questions remains unanswered relating to Vanadium biosynthesis pathway in Chenopodim marule. Some of these questions include these: Thus, the plant excludes most of the vanadium? Or it takes it up and metabolizes to other by-products, which might help in explaining why there was no/ impute levels of Vanadium detected in the leaves.