Lantana camara——an Ecological Bioindicator Plant for Decontamination of Pb-Impaired Soil Under Organic Waste-Supplemented Scenarios

Heavy metal extraction and processing from ores releases elements into the environment. Soil, being an "unfortunate" sink, has its bionomics impaired and affected by metal pollution. Metals sneak into the food chain and pose risk to humans and other edaphicdependent organisms. For decontamination, the use of an ecosystem-friendly approach involving plants is known as phytoremediation.In this study, different lead(Pb) concentrations(80, 40, 20, and 10 mg kg~(-1)) were used to contaminate a well-characterized soil,(un)supplemented with organic waste empty fruit bunch(EFB) or spent mushroom compost(SMC), with non-edible plant—Lantana camara. Lead removal by L. camara ranged from 45.51% to 88.03% for supplemented soil, and from 23.7% to 57.8% for unsupplemented soil(P 0.05). The EFB-supplemented and L. camara-remediated soil showed the highest counts of heavy metal-resistant bacteria(HMRB)(79.67 × 10~6–56.0 × 10~6 colony forming units(CFU) g~(-1) soil), followed by SMC-supplemented and L. camara-remediated soil(63.33 × 10~6–39.0 × 10~6 CFU g~(-1) soil). Aerial metal uptake ranged from 32.08 ± 0.8 to 5.03 ± 0.08 mg kg~(-1) dry weight, and the bioaccumulation factor ranged from 0.401 to 0.643(P 0.05). Half-lives(t_(1/2)) of Pb were 7.24–2.26 d in supplemented soil,18.39–11.83 d in unsupplemented soil, and 123.75–38.72 d in the soil without plants and organic waste. Freundlich isotherms showed that the intensity of metal absorption(n) ranged from 2.44 to 2.51 for supplemented soil, with regression coefficients of determination(R~2) between 0.901 2 and 0.984 0. The computed free-energy change(?G) for Pb absorption ranged from -5.01 to 0.49 kJ mol~(-1) K~(-1) for EFB-supplemented soil and -3.93 to 0.49 k J mol~(-1) K~(-1) for SMC-supplemented soil.