Bioindicators of Pesticide Contaminations

Abstract

Reducing the economic losses caused by pests, and for improving crop yields, use of pesticides in agriculture is imperative. The continuous use of pesticides in the environment is of great concern as some of them are highly persistant and causes harmful impact on non-target organisms. So, monitoring of them is utmost important for management of pesticide pollution. Among the different monitoring tools for pesticide pollution, use of bioindicator using living organism or its part or group of organisms becoming the technique of choice as this is an inexpensive, specific and easy to handle method. Moreover, number of living organisms could accumulate the pesticides and thus helps in indicating the environmental pesticides pollution.Here, a review on biomonitoring of environmental pesticides pollution by using bioindicator is presented. Pesticides contamination in air, soil and water and their route of entry into the environmental matrices are first presented followed by a general idea have been given on well-known natural species used as environmental pesticides pollution bioindictaor. These species include microbes, animals and plants of different groups which were widely used for bioindication of environmental pesticides pollution from history to recent research which has been discussed elaborately.KeywordsPesticidesEnvironmental pollutionBioindicatorsBiomonitorsPlantMicrobesAnimal