Reduction of the impact of dust on quantitative and qualitative characteristics of white seedless grape variety by washing with d-octil

Atmospheric dust is one of the pollutants that is considered the biggest environmental problems in different parts of the world. Dust can affect, either directly or indirectly, both plants and crops. The direct impact is on critical activities such as plant photosynthesis, evapotranspiration, stomata conductance, pigments, leaf temperature and breathing. The indirect effect may be influenced on reduction of the fruit quality and yield. This study aims at investigating the adverse effects of dust on grape vineyard in Malayer, Hamedan Province, Iran.
The Experiment was conducted in randomized completely block design for evaluation of the effects of dust on White Seedless Grape (Vitis vinifera L.) in the Grape Research Institute, Malayer, on 27 vines during 2014-2015 year. the first treatment was dust (9 plants) that soil samples were collected from Khuzestan province and after preparation was applied on the plant in four growth stages using mechanical devices; the second treatment, solution treatment that dusts were washed with water and di octyl; the third one was control (9 plants) treatment. Chlorophyll a and b, carotenoids, vegetative traits such as length of cane, length of leaf, leaf area, length of peduncle, internodes and reproductive traits such as fruit set, number of berry and number of bunch, length of bunch, number of berries in bunch, weight of berry and brix of berry were measured.
The results revealed that leaf pigments reduction was caused due to deposition of dust on leaf surface and differences between treatments was significant at the 5% probablity level. The vegetative traits viz. length of peduncle, internodes and leaf area were small in dust treatment and the difference between treatments was significant. Length of cane in the second stage was significant and longest canes were in the solution treatment. Fruit set, number of berries and number of bunch were reduced in dust treatment and a significant difference was observed between treatments. In addition, control and solution treatments were in one class. Moreover, sugar in a single grape was decreased up to 7 % in dust treatment as compared to other ones.
Dust treatment had more effect on b chlorophyll in the first, the third and the fourth growth stages of grape as compared to a chlorophyll and Carotenoid. In addition, the difference among means was significant at 5 % level. The previous studies showed that the leaf dust accumulation decreased pigment content of plant )Kumar Rai and panda, 2014(. Leghari et al., 2013 confirmed that roadside plant could be damaged by dust and had shorter length of cane. The rate of fruit set in control, dust and solution treatments were 36%, 21% and 33%, respectively. Moreover, the percentage of brix in control, dust and solution treatments, were 20%, 7% and 15%, respectively. The researches revealed that dust could reduce photosynthesis and consequently the amount of brix in grapes (Chaurasia et al., 2013) which were in agreement with our study.