International Journal of Biology Research

Authors
Aminullah Yousafzai, Asmatullah Durani, Atal Hameedi, Muhammad Hassan Mohammadi, Hashmatullah Durrani, Khuwaja Safiullah

Abstract
Air pollution is one of the serious problems the world is facing today. It deteriorates ecological condition and can be defined as the fluctuation in any atmosphere constituent from the value that pollutants responsible for flora injury and crop yield losses, are causing increased concern. In the present investigation comparative studies have been done to find the effect of air pollutants generated from the exhaust of automobiles on the chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and total chlorophyll of leaves. The leaves samples of Mangifera indica L., Ficus religiosa L., Plumeria rubra L., Lagestroemia speciosa (L.) pers., Alstonia scholaris (L.)R. Br., Butea monosperma (Lam.) Taub, and Polyalthia longifolia sonn., were collected in two different season with potentially higher and lower levels of air pollution. Photosynthetic pigments chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and total chlorophyll content were quantified. A reduction in the photosynthetic pigments of leave sample collected in the dry and higher polluted season as compared to rainy or less polluted season were observed in all studied tree species except Plumeria rubra which showed slightly increasing trend of photosynthetic pigments in dry season compare to rainy season.