Impact of Sugar Industry Effluent on Soil

Sugar industry plays a major role in creating pollution of water bodies and soil, because effluent contain large amount of organic and inorganic chemicals. Direct discharge of effluents from this industry may have profound influence on soil physico-chemical and biological properties. Hence, characterization of the effects of sugar industry effluents on soil is an urgent need to identify the problem areas, so that proper steps could be taken up before the soil just become hardly of any use. The present study was conducted to investigate the impact of sugar industry effluents on the soil spread over an area of radius of 2 km from the mill. The soil physico-chemical parameters such as pH, electrical conductivity, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, iron, nanganese, zinc and copper were monitored at residential and three polluted sites and at two different depths. The analysis of the parameters shows that pH and electrical conductivity were high compared to residential site and found to decrease as the distance from the mill increased. The same trait was encountered with depth variations. The macronutrient nitrogen decreased away from the mill where as phosphorus and potassium showed increase at site 2 and a decline at sites 1 and 3, respectively. Among the micronutrients, iron was found to be high at all the sites. The iron content increased at all the sites, because of its solubility and ready availability to the soil. All the micronutrients except iron showed a similar trend of higher values at site 2 compared to sites 1 and 3. The high level of phosphorus, potassium, manganese, zinc and copper at site 2 can be attributed to the fact that leaching due to the rain.