The effect of soil stress contaminated with lead and cadmium elements in Arak region on growth indicators and chlorophyll and carotenoid content of sunflower cultivars

This research was evaluated in order to investigate the effect of soil contaminated with heavy elements in Arak region on three sunflower cultivars. The first factor includes: soil contaminated with heavy elements collected from Arak region and its comparison with the uncontaminated control collected from Tafarsh region, and the second factor includes cultivars including: Armaviroski, Alstar, and Ezoflor, common cultivars of sunflower cultivation in Arak region. The effect of contaminated soil on leaf area index traits and leaf area ratio was significant at the level of 1%, but it had no significant effect on other traits. The effect of the cultivar was also significant on the leaf area index at the level of 1%, but it was not significant on the other evaluated indices.. In the investigation of the content of chlorophyll a, the highest amount was assigned to the Alstar cultivar at the rate of 10.54 mg/g fresh weight of leaves, and the lowest amount was assigned to the variety Azoflor at the rate of 10.23 mg/g fresh weight of leaves, which did not have a significant difference. Examining the amount of carotenoid, Allstar, Armaviroski and Azoflor cultivars had 2.53, 2.07 and 1.98 mg per gram of leaf wet weight, respectively, which was significant at the five percent level. Among the cultivars, the most The seed yield was assigned to the Azoflor cultivar at the rate of 3822 kg/ha and the lowest yield was assigned to the Alstar variety at the rate of 2231 kg/ha.