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Effect of Polyethylene Terephthalate Microplastics on Tomato Plant: Experimental and AI Modeling
Summary
Researchers exposed tomato plants to polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microplastics and found that the plastic particles inhibited growth, reduced chlorophyll, and disrupted cellular structures. AI-based modeling predicted plant stress responses at different microplastic concentrations, demonstrating that PET contamination in agricultural soils can impair food crop production.
Microplastics impacts on terrestrial ecosystem have gained attention in recent times, after about a decade of research being limited to aquatic systems. Although the impacts on soil physical characteristics and soil organisms are beginning to manifest, there is also a noticeable negative influence on plant growth and vitality. The Plant height, branches per plant, days to first fruit set, fruits per plant, fruit diameter, fruit weight (gm), and overall yield (q/hec) overall performances were explored. The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum Linn.) plant variety used in our study is Pusa ruby and the MPs used was Polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Different experimental parameters were also varied like MPs weight percentage (2%-5%), Nitrogen content (0.05 % -0.15%), Carbon content (1.5 %-2%), C-N ratio (14-15) and Phosphorus content (65-75). Furthermore, numerical modeling using artificial neural network (ANN) for validating the experimental results demonstrated an overall R2 value > 0.99. Our results showed that overall yield of fruit was decreased and it has also effects on different plant morphological characteristics. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT