Determination of Concentration of Trace Elements in Agricultural Soil (Fertile and Non-Fertile Soil) in Wad Hamid (River Nile State)

Abstract

Plants are very important for human life. recently it was observed thatplants using chemical fertilizers cause some times severe biological hazards. On the other hand, the elemental contents of the soil determine the suitable plants which can grow in it this encourages to do this work which aims to determine the elemental contents of clay and sand soil beside studying the effect of adding chemical fertilizer to them. In this work 16 samples were prepared 5cm depth from clay soil region, 4 nonfertilized and 4 fertilized samples were taken in a powder form. From sand soil region 4 non-fertilized and chemical fertilized samples were also prepared. All samples were taken from Wad Hamid region near the River Nile. The elemental contents of all samples were determined using x-ray fluorescence (XRF) and atomic absorption spectrometer (AAS) and laser induced break down spectroscopy (LIBS). The results obtained shows that for clay samples the concentration of Fe is higher in non-fertilized samples while the concentration of Cr, Mn, Ni, Au is higher in fertilized samples. for sand samples the concentration ofAu, Pb are higher in non-fertilized samples while the concentration of Cr, Mn, Ni is higher in fertilized samples. This means that fertilization process added more Cr, Mn,Ni to the soil. the XRF technique looks more accurate than AAS and LIBS as for as it detects more elements with higher concentration (higher detection limit) than the other two techniques. It can detect Mo, W, V in clay samples beside Co, Ti,Nb in sand samples which cannot be detected by AAS and LIBS. LIBS gives very poor results since it is unable to detect most of the elements detected by XRF and AAS. Thus in soil elemental analysis XRF is more accurate in determining the soil elements while AAS can confirm the results of XRF.