Metals availability to plants

Simeoni L.A., Barbarick K.A., Sabey B.R. Effect of small-scale composting of sewage sludge on heavy metal availability to plants. J Environ Qual 1984 13 264-268. 

Recently, attempts have been made to develop biomimetic methods, simulating plant uptake of metals. An example of such a method is DGT (diffusive gradients in thin films), developed by Zhang et al. (2001), for measuring metal availability to plants. In this case, metal accumulation in a chelex layer is measured. By taking into account thickness of the diffusive layer covering the chelex layer and contact time with the soil sample, it is possible to estimate the available metal concentration in the soil solution. The DGT method may also be used to estimate metal speciation in surface water (Zhang 2004). 

Organic Matter (and Eh) Effects. Evidence for organic matter control, by complex formation, of heavy metal availability to plants has previously been deduced from a positive correlation of the organic matter and the heavy metal contents of soils (2, J3, J02, J03,122,130, 216, 233), and from the release of heavy metals upon treatment of soils with hydrogen peroxide (13, 53, 248). On the contrary, it is proposed that the gen-... 

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