Emerging organic contaminants in fruits of Cucumis melo spp. grafted on different rootstocks. Preliminary data

Organic micropollutants are comprised of a broad spectrum of compounds belonging to different chemical classes and used for a large number of applications. Among these, emerging contaminants include pharmaceuticals, personal care products, plasticizers, surfactants, herbicides and their degradation products. The concentration of micropollutants in agricultural irrigation waters ranged from 10 to 5130 ng L-1 and the human exposure through fruit and vegetable consumption was estimated to be 9.8 μg per person per week. The health implications of some of these are well known, as example phthalate esters, the most common industrial chemicals, were estrogenic compounds. In this regards, the research aimed at evaluating the presence of emerging volatile contaminants, such as solvents (chloroform, carbitol), antioxidants (BHT, BHA), aromatic compounds from petrochemical industry (BTX), plasticisers (phthalates) etc., in the fruits of C. melon spp. grafted on different resistant rootstocks. The data showed a different amount of contaminants in melon fruits depending on the different rootstock-scion combinations. Grafted fruits of C. melo cv. Incas showed a lower amount of contaminants than ungrafted fruits, the opposite happened for the cv. Proteo. In particular, the Incas-Elsi and Incas-Sting grafting combinations showed the lowest amount of contaminants whereas the Proteo-Sting and Proteo-AS10 the highest. The different behavior can be attributed to a different interaction rootstock-scion, that may exhibit dissimilar abilities to take up nutrients and non-nutrient elements. Further studies are necessary to confirm the data here reported also in crops under different biotic and abiotic conditions.