Mitigation of Lead Toxicity in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Using Citrus Biochar

Abstract

The human population is increasing exponentially around the world. It is currently recorded 8 billion in 2023, which is expected to rise upto 10 billion by 2050 (Profiroiu et al., 2020). Such increase in population comes up with increasing industrialization and urbanization to meet global food demand. Industrialization is also considered as one of the biggest sources of contaminating agricultural eco logy specifically with heavy metals. These heavy metals after exposure, accumulate in plants and harm their overall productivity and physiology. Lead (Pb) is also one such heavy metals that shows drastic effects on food crops. Leguminous crops showed reduced crop productivity and yield due to soil contamination and bioaccumulation of lead (Bakll'dere et at., 2016). Among all legumes, chickpea is one of the widely affected staple crop. The increased lead toxicity has led to diminishing of essential amino acid contents, seed protein quality, total Nitrogen and Phosphorus content and stimulation of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) in chickpea (Ghosh et al., 2022; P. Kumar & Naik, 2020).