Research Projects

For many rural areas in Punjab, where underground water is the only source of safe drinking water, high concentration of fluoride has emerged to cause a serious crisis threatening public health. In irrigated areas, the use of groundwater containing elevated levels of fluoride is of concern not only due to direct ingestion of water by livestock but also due to its consumption in plant matter following its plant uptake from irrigated soils. In this study, the geotagged ground water samples will be collected from the point and non-point sources (hand pumps and tube wells) used to supply drinking water and from tube wells used for irrigation in the parts of Punjab. These samples will be analyzed for various chemical parameters and the concentration of fluoride will be predicted using GIS and machine learning techniques. These results will be useful to monitor the fluoride concentration in drinking water before it is being supplied to rural population, for decisions about installing defluoridation plants in areas, monitoring health problems and also about treatment of water used for irrigation.