Implications of Secondary Treated Distillery Effluent Irrigation on Soil Cellulase and Urease Activities

Abstract

Currently distillery effluents have attracted worldwide attention for their application in agricultural land. The present investigation deals with the effect of application of various dosages of distillery effluent irrigation on soil physicochemical, Cellulase and Urease activities in a tropical agricultural field. Experiment was designed in factorial model by using randomized block design. Soil cores were sampled from the selected pits of both polluted and non polluted (control) sites. Majority of soil physicochemical properties (e.g. silt, clay, electrical conductivity, organic matter, total nitrogen contents, cellulase and urease activities) were significantly higher in the samples from polluted site than the non polluted site just after 15 to 30 days of incubation. Although application of effluents at lower rate substantially increased the enzyme activities, the same decreased at high effluent concentration. Prolonged incubation period resulted in gradual suppression of enzyme activity in both polluted and nonpolluted soil samples. Thus, the present investigation suggest that with the passage of time substrate for enzyme activity decreases which in association with residual toxicity resulted in the reduced enzyme activity.