Authors: N Hattab R Hambli
Publish Date: 2014/01/21
Volume: 11, Issue: 6, Pages: 1781-1786
Abstract
The assessment of copper and chromium concentrations in plants requires the quantification of a large number of soil factors that affect their potential availability and subsequent toxicity and a mathematical model that predicts their relative concentrations in plants While many soil characteristics have been implicated as altering copper and chromium availability to plants in soil accurate rapid and simple predictive models of metal concentrations are still lacking for soil and plant analysis In the current study an artificial neural network model was developed and applied to predict the exposure of bean leaves BL to high concentrations of copper and chromium versus some selected soil properties pH soil electrical conductivity and dissolved organic carbon A series of measurements was performed on soil samples to assess the variation of copper and chromium concentrations in BL versus the soil inputs The performance of the artificial neural network model was then evaluated using a test data set and applied to predict the exposure of the BL to the metal concentration versus the soil inputs Correlation coefficients of 099981 and 09979 for Cu and 099979 and 09975 for Cr between the measured and artificial neural networks predicted values were found respectively during the testing and validation procedures Results showed that the artificial neural network model can be successfully applied to the rapid and accurate prediction of copper and chromium concentrations in BL
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