Development of Soil-Crop Inventory on Heavy Metals and its Innovative Use

Date

October 22-25, 2007

Venue

Japan

Co-sponsors

• National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences (NIAES), Japan
• Japanese Society of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition
• National Agricultural Research Center (NARC)
• Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS)

Background / Highlights of Activity

Along with industrial expansion, arable lands have been gradually degraded or contaminated with heavy metals and organic pollutants in most Asian countries. In the two decades, this trend became obvious, and significantly aggravated the quality of soil and crop because of the increased concentration of pollutants in them. This will, in turn, bring about a great risk against human health and deteriorate environmental quality in this region.

Codex has proposed a new standard of Cadmium in agricultural products such as rice grain, wheat, vegetable, meat and so forth, and some Asian countries followed suit to change the critical concentrations of heavy metals in soils and crops. However, most of the Asian countries have not surveyed the concentration of heavy metals in soil as well as crop, nor established a similar regulation because of the lack of reliable data.

It is, therefore, a matter of urgency to collect reliable data on heavy metal concentrations in soil and crop from various Asian countries, and to construct a comprehensive database to accommodate all the relevant data as to heavy metals in variety of soils, crops, irrigation water, agricultural supplies, fertilizers and so forth. Based upon this database, a variety of useful information and methodologies are developed for providing safe foods to Asian people.

The symposium will be held as a special session of the 8th ESAFS conference in cooperation with NIAES, NARC, JIRCAS and Japanese Society for Soil and Plant Nutrition.

Objectives

1. To collect more reliable data on heavy metals in soils as well as in crops from Asian countries.
2. To develop a comprehensive database of heavy metals contained both in soils and crops, and to elucidate the relationship between contents of soil heavy metals and those in crops.
3. To develop a methodology to evaluate the bioavailability of heavy metals in various soils and to minimize the amount of heavy metals accumulated in edible parts of crops.
4. To propose an appropriate heavy metal level in various soils for the food safety in Asian countries.

Tentative topics to be addressed:

1. How to estimate the bioavailability of heavy metals in the soils with different chemical and physical properties in different contaminated sites.
2. How to estimate the would-be concentration of heavy metals in crops based on a newly developed data inventory (database) of soil properties and environments.
3. How to reduce the bioavailability of heavy metals in rice and vegetables through the technologies of soil remediation and/or soil amendment.
4. How to evaluate the risk level of soils with/without applying different soil remediation and soil amendment treatments.
5. How to evaluate soil quality in terms of its heavy metal level, sustainable crop production, and high quality crop production.

Details/additional information about this activity can be accessed from the following site: http://www.esafs8.com/