SELENIUM STATUS IN SOME NORTH SINAI SOILS 2. INLAND AREA

Authors

1 Inst. Heliopolis Military Sec., Cairo, Min. Edu., Egypt.

2 Dept. Soil and Water, Fac. Environ. Agric. Sci., Arish Univ., Egypt.

3 Inst. Soil Water and Environ., A.R.C., Egypt.

Abstract

The present study was conducted during the two seasons of 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 in North Sinai Governorate to investigate the spatial variations of (se) concentrations in inland area. Two range plants (atriblex and acacia) were used as indicators plants. Selenium status, (total and available) were determined in the soils of inland area of the governorate including (El-Hassana and Nekhl). Soil samples were taken from (0-30, 30-60, 60-90 and 90-120cm) layers. Soil samples were taken from three sites at any location were Atriblex or acacia range plants were naturally grown. Leaves samples from two studied range plants were taken on April during the two studied seasons, while selenium concentrations were determined in such plant samples. The obtained results indicated that total selenium concentrations in the studied soils ranged from 0.10 ppm to 0.45 ppm in the whole inland area studied soils compared to global crustal concentrations of 0.083 ppm. The high content of the total selenium concentration under such condition may be due to the effect of dry deposition of dust. The obtained results cleared that the selenium contents in inland area are lower than that under crustal area. Hence geographical aspects, specially the distance from sea could not be complete ignored with respect to the selenium status under different studied areas conditions. With respect to extractable Se from the studied soils, obtained results revealed that the Se extractable using DTPA ranged from 0.010 ppm to 0.022 ppm, compared to those extracted with water and CaCl2 which ranged from 0.010 to 0.019 ppm and 0.011 to 0.018 ppm, respectively. It is worth to mention that Se extracted with DTPA was higher than that extracted using other two extract agents. At all cases, using all studied extracting agents, extracted only a few quantities which ranged from 3.12% to 16.36% of total Se in the studied soils. Such obtained results revealed that most total Se in the studied soils found in forms not extracted with the studied extracting agents and hence, not available for plant absorption. The average selenium concentrations in the two studied range plants varied from 2.87 to 3.46 ppm in atriplex compared to 0.17 and 0.29 ppm in acacia plant. Such results clear that the potential differences between range plants used by animals with repect to selenium concentration.

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