Influence of crop types and soil properties on radionuclide soil-to-plant transfer factors in tropical and subtropical environments

This paper presents a descriptive statistical analysis of radionuclide soil-to-plant transfer factors (Fv) for tropical and subtropical environments. These values were collected from previous databases and standard publications with the objective of contributing to the IAEA Technical Report Series: Handbook of parameter values for the prediction of radionuclide transfer to humans in terrestrial and freshwater environments. More than 2200 Fv values of different radionuclides were gathered and arranged into specific databases, detailing relevant information regarding the environments where this parameter was calculated. This study explores the dependence of Fv values to crop types, and soil properties. The wide variability and uncertainty observed in calculated Fv values were considerably reduced when the data was independently grouped into clusters containing the same radionuclide/plant group/soil type combinations. For each cluster the principal statistical quantities were determined. Using these quantities, the Fv distributions of each data set was explored. Fv probability distribution is discussed to clarify the use of this empirical parameter in radioecological and radiological assessment models.