Soil to plant transfer factor of 137Cs, 40K, and stable Cs in a semi-arid region

Abstract

Radionuclide transport from soil to plants is important for radiological contamination of food and estimation of internal radiation doses from consuming contaminated food. Wheat, clover, purslane and soil samples were collected from agricultural fields in the semi-arid region of Iğdır, Türkiye. The concentrations of ¹³⁷Cs, ⁴⁰K, and stable Cs were measured and soil-to-plant transfer factors were calculated. The concentrations of ¹³⁷Cs (derived from global fallout deposition), ⁴⁰K and stable Cs in soils ranged from 1.9 to 8.4 Bq kg⁻¹, 318–2033 Bq kg⁻¹ and 1.6–18.5 mg kg⁻¹ respectively. The geometric mean concentrations of ¹³⁷Cs, ⁴⁰K and stable Cs in wheat grain were measured as 8.4 Bq kg⁻¹ dry wt., 417 Bq kg⁻¹ dry wt. and 3.6 mg kg⁻¹ dry wt. respectively. Geometric mean value of the soil to stem of cereal (wheat), grass (clover) and leafy vegetable (purslane) transfer factor (F_ν) for ¹³⁷Cs were estimated as 5.7 x 10⁻², 2.8 x 10⁻² and 9.2 x 10⁻² which were higher than values reported in IAEA-TRS 472 except grain of wheat which was approximately equal to that of temperate climate values 1.1 x 10⁻¹. The F_ν values of stable Cs were estimated somewhat lower than that of F_ν of ¹³⁷Cs for wheat grain, wheat stems, clover and purslane.