Assessment of common plant parameters as biomarkers of air pollution

Air pollution is a very serious current environmental issue of human society. Large parts of countries, especially the densely populated cities, having high vehicular movement, industries, and factories, are worst affected. Biomarkers are changes in plant parameters that help in easy assessment of the environmental quality of an area at a certain time. Plants can react to different environmental stresses with the most evident responses shown by the leaves. In the present work, we have studied changes in biochemical parameters in the leaves of a mango plant (Mangifera indica), a very common plant in West Bengal, India, which were collected from four different locations in the city of Kolkata which has a high concentration of air pollutants and one control area from a rural region having a low concentration of air pollutants. It was observed that leaves which were exposed to high amounts of harmful air pollutants showed higher accumulation of molecules such as phenol, proline, malondialdehyde, and cellulose with lower amounts of chlorophyll. From this, we can observe that common environmental stress such as air pollution leads to a change in the synthesis of bioactive molecules to resist the effect of stress on the plant. Thus, from these data, it can be concluded that biochemical parameters can serve as efficient biomarkers of the air quality of an area.