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Abstract
A field survey was conducted to investigate the concentrations of chromium (Cr), nickel
(Ni), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) in vegetables, corresponding
cultivated soils and irrigation waters from 36 open sites in high natural background
area of Wuzhou, South China. Redundancy analysis, Spearman's rho correlation analysis
and multiple regression analysis were adopted to evaluate the contributions of impacting
factors on metal contents in the edible parts of vegetables. This study concluded
that leafy and root vegetables had relatively higher metal concentrations and adjusted
transfer factor values compared to fruiting vegetables according to nonparametric
tests. Plant species, total soil metal content and soil pH value were affirmed as
three critical factors with the highest contribution rate among all the influencing
factors. The bivariate curve equation models for heavy metals in the edible vegetable
tissues were well fitted to predict the metal concentrations in vegetables. The results
from this case study also suggested that it could be one of efficient strategies for
clean agricultural production and food safety in high natural background area to breed
vegetable varieties with low heavy metal accumulation and to enlarge planting scale
of these varieties.