Udiba et al. 2020 - Senna obtusifolia lead remediation potential

Udiba and colleagues evaluated whether wild Senna obtusifolia could phytoextract lead from contaminated soils in Dareta Village, Zamfara. This is in-scope a2 remediation evidence with paired plant-tissue and soil lead data.

Key numbers

The study reports mean Pb concentrations across 5 field plots for soil, roots, stems, and leaves.

For plot 1, the paper reports soil 130.68 ± 5.2 mg/kg, roots 61.33 ± 17.86 mg/kg, stems 66.64 ± 18.10 mg/kg, and leaves 173.39 ± 13.73 mg/kg. For plot 4, the reported values were soil 396.86 ± 5.48 mg/kg, roots 91.64 ± 2.87 mg/kg, stems 150.58 ± 2.21 mg/kg, and leaves 282.53 ± 5.69 mg/kg.

The paper reports average translocation factor 3.65 ± 0.66, bioaccumulation factor 1.01 ± 0.23, and bioconcentration factor 0.29 ± 0.10, supporting the authors’ phytoextraction interpretation.

The discussion notes that mean leaf lead concentrations were far above Codex and EU leafy-vegetable lead maxima, so consumption of leaves from the study area would pose intoxication risk.

Methods (brief)

Soil and plant samples were collected from five plots in Dareta Village. Lead was measured by atomic absorption spectrophotometry after wet digestion, with three analytical replicates and reference-material checks. The authors then calculated translocation, bioaccumulation, and bioconcentration factors.

Implications

Certification: Not market-product occurrence evidence. This is phytoremediation and contaminated-plant-tissue evidence from a mining-impacted setting.

Courses: Strong example of how remediation potential can coexist with unsafe edible-tissue concentrations in the same plant.

App: Context-only mitigation and exposure-warning evidence.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• Remediation evidence — drivers and interventions
• Soil-to-plant transfer of heavy metals
• Lead

Verification notes

Recovered from the corpus-rescreen queue under the 2026-06-10 inclusion-by-default rule. Products and ingredients remain intentionally empty because this is a remediation/contaminated-field paper rather than a market leafy-vegetable occurrence survey.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.