Effects of reclaimed wastewater irrigation on the quality of maize and soybean

In order to rationally use the reclaimed wastewater after treated wastewater, the potted experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of different reclaimed wastewater(second effluent water and tertiary effluent water from Beijing GaoBeiDian wastewater treatment plant) irrigation on the quality of maize(NongDa 108) and soybean(Zhonghuang 13). The experiment was designed to study the crop quality through measuring the general quality indexes,some heavy metals and microelements. Results show that, on the quality of crude protein and crude starch, no significant differences are observed between the control of fresh water irrigation and the treatments of reclaimed wastewater irrigation. On microelements, there are not significant differences between the control and reclaimed wastewater treatments for soybean grains while the influence is related to the reclaimed wastewater quality for maize. The cadmium and lead contents of maize and soybean meet the national sanitation standard(GB 2715-1981). Compared with the control treatment, the content of cadmium of maize increases under the second effluent water treatment. So it is considered that the tertiary effluent water is much safer than the second effluent water when used in crop irrigation and it is strongly suggested that there should be a continuous monitoring of the second effluent water quality of cadmium content.