Heavy metals in vineyard soils of Vojvodina province.

The study presented in this paper deals with heavy metals content in vineyard soils from 44 individual producers' lots from Vojvodina province, as well as detailed analyses of heavy metals content in vineyards from 3 sites (Sremski Karlovci, Banoštor and Vršac) in comparison with the control sample. Vojvodinian vineyard soils are generally not contaminated with heavy metals, with the exception of copper due to long-term intensive application of copper-based fungicide. In soil of 44 small vineyards, local contamination with Cr and Zn was found on one locality each, and geochemical origin Ni content higher than MAC in 9 samples from Fruška gora. Based on the second part of this study, content of all heavy metals, excluding Cu, was below MAC. However, in comparison to control sample, the content of As, Cd, Co, Cr, Ni and Pb was higher in vineyard soils at due to antropogenic influence and application of agro-chemicals. The highest concentration of Cu 336 mg kg-1 was noted in Petrovaradin in surface layer of soil, which is three times the value of MAC (100 mg kg-1). Out of total 226 analysed samples from all depths, 44 samples exceeded MAC value. It is especially unfavourable that 23 % of all analysed vineyard soils surface layers are in critical concentration zone (>60 mg kg-1) and 33 % exceed MAC, which shows that more than half of analysed Vojvodina vineyards are in need of monitoring, risk assessment and reduction of copper-based chemicals application.