eng Oriental Scientific Publishing Company Biosciences Biotechnology Research Asia 0973-1245 2016-04-04 5 2 767 772 7561 article Y.D. Bafna 1 S.R. Thorat 1 School of Environmental and Earth Science North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon (India). In the present investigation three soils contaminated by heavy metals were characterized as clay loam, loam and sandy clay loam. Their organic matter, pH and saturated hydraulic conductivity (K6) ranged from 5.4 to 9.9%, 4.2 to 6.3 and 1.1 to 4.0*10-4 cm/s, respectively. The metal content (in mg/kg) were, (1) Cr: 840, (2) Mn: 868, (3) Hg: 1280 and (4) Pb: 1664 with (5) Zn: 1029 for the sandy clay loam. As apposed in MgCl2 and CaCl2, BaCl2 was found to better exchange the heavy metals in all 3 soils. With BaCl2 31% to 70% of Cd and Zn were exchanged while only 17% to 20%of Hg & Pb were exchanged. By sequential extraction on all three soils, most of the heavy metals were found to be bound to Fe / Mn oxides and the organic fraction (30% to 40%) except for Cd and Zn which were mainly present on the exchangeable fraction (63% to 87%). https://www.biotech-asia.org/vol5no2/study-on-retention-form-of-heavy-metals-in-three-polluted-soil-of-north-maharashtra-region/ Sequential extraction; soil contaminated by heavy metals