Assessment of air pollution tolerance levels of some plant species of Jammu

The air pollution tolerance indices (APTI) of four plant species: Ficus religiosa, Polyalthia longifolia, Pterospernum acerifolium and Thevetia peruviana growing along roadsides at polluted site (Satwari-Bikram Chowk road)  in Jammu city has been worked out and compared with the plants growing at the reference location (New University Campus) to categorize plants as sensitive or resistant. The plants were analysed for leaf relative water content (RWC), ascorbic acid content (AA), total leaf chlorophyll (T Ch) and leaf extract pH to compute the APTI values which indicated that all plants belong to sensitive category as per the index range given by Gaikwad et al. (2006). The values of all the studied biochemical parameters and APTI has been observed to decline in the plants growing at polluted sites in comparison to plants growing at reference site. However, among the plant species growing at polluted site, Ficus religiosa has been observed to be comparatively more tolerant against air pollutants with a maximum APTI value (4.76±0.16) whereas Pterospernum acerifolium is more sensitive to air pollutants with minimum APTI value (1.65±0.19). The order of tolerance among these plants has been observed to be: Ficus religiosa> Polyalthia longifolia> Thevetia peruviana> Pterospernum acerifolium. The result also indicated that combining variety of these parameters gave a more reliable result than those of individual parameter.