Seasonal variation of arsenic and its accumulation in straw and grain of rice plant in Ambagarh Chowki block of Rajnandgaon district Chhattisgarh

Rice is the major food crop of this area, as the cultivation of rice requires huge volume of water and long term use of arsenic contaminated ground water for irrigation and arsenic contaminated soil may result into the bio-accumulation of arsenic in rice crop. Accumulation of arsenic was found in rice plant and results revealed that in rice straw arsenic content ranged from 0.006 to 0.082 mg kg-1 with an average of 0.024±0.0198 mg kg-1 and in rice grain, the content of arsenic ranged from 0.003 to 0.057 mg kg-1 with an average of 0.011±0.0123 mg kg-1 which is lower than the permissible limit of arsenic in rice plant that is 1 mg kg-1 (WHO). It was observed that the accumulation of arsenic is high in straw as compared to grain of rice crop.