Heavy metals in vegetables and agricultural soils irrigated with surface water: a systematic review

This review describes the information reported in different scientific publications in relation to the concentration levels of heavy metals in vegetables and crop soils in the world, considering that the identification of the sources and the processes that lead to contamination of crop soils by heavy metals are relevant to achieve safe and sustainable vegetable production. The objective of this study was to analyze research articles about concentration levels of heavy metals in vegetables and agricultural soils irrigated with surface water, from the review of the literature published in the last five years, considering a rigorous search defined by the PRISMA methodology in scientific databases from ScienceDirect and Scielo. The result added the analysis of 21 studies, published between 2018 and 2022, with relevant information about the different heavy metals and their concentration levels in vegetables and crop soils, the analysis methodology in the laboratory, based on the wet digestion process and atomic absorption spectrometry. Also, it is shown that most of the studies were carried out in Asia and Africa.