RED AMARANTH (AMARANTHUS TRICOLOR L.) IRRIGATED WITHDOMESTIC SEWAGE WASTEWATER AS A SOURCE OFIRRIGATION: ENVIRONMENTAL FOOD SECURITY AND SAFETYASSESSMENT PERSPECTIVES THROUGH ACUTE AND SUB-ACUTE TOXICITY STUDYSiddhuraju Perumal, Dhanya Viswanathan, Haritha Thulaseedharan Nair and Roopika SivaramanAbstract Water deficiency is one of the main factors for limiting sustainable agricultural development in most aridand semi-arid regions. There is a gradual decline in the availability of fresh water to be used for irrigationin developing countries like India. Sewage farming is quite common in all urban areas in India. The effectof its direct and long-term use for irrigation needs a thorough study. However, there is increasing concernabout food safety and health risks, hence, a case study was undertaken to understand the long-term effectof domestic sewage wastewater irrigation on heavy metal concentrations in soil and plants. The studyreveals the mineral and heavy metal composition of irrigated domestic sewage wastewater and it has beencompared with the well water irrigated in the rural area, soil parameters and also the mineral and heavymetal composition of a cultivated plant, Amaranthus tricolor L. Transfer factor (TF) was calculated tounderstand the extent of risk and associated hazard due to wastewater irrigation and the consequence ofheavy metals accumulation in the edible portion of experimented vegetables. The present study was carriedout to assess the potential toxicity of acetone extract of A. tricolor with some essential parameters such ashaematological and biochemical parameters, liver and kidney weight and their histopathological study.After conducting in vivo acute and subchronic toxicity experiments using the rat model, there was no toxicityor mortality observed between domestic sewage water and well water irrigated to red amaranth, A. tricolor. |