The Effects of Copper Hydroxide, Captan and Trifloxystrobin Fungicides on Soil Phosphomonoesterase and Urease Activity

Abstract

There is increasing community awareness of the potential environmental risks posed by Cu-based fungicide use, which is placing increasing pressure on governments and industry to undertake risk minimisation action. However, if there is going to be a widespread move away from the use of Cu-based fungicides, logically there needs to be assurance that the alternatives pose a lower environmental risk. To that end, this study compared the effect of copper hydroxide, captan and trifloxystrobin on soil enzymatic (phosphomonoesterase and urease) activity. Compared to an untreated control, copper did not inhibit either enzyme activity, even at the highest dose used in the study (156 mg/kg). At their respective high doses, captan (96 mg/kg) and trifloxystrobin (144 mg/kg) did not cause inhibition of phosphomonoesterase activity but did inhibit urease activity. Consequently, the results from this study suggest that the copper hydroxide alternatives, captan and trifloxystrobin, do not pose a short-term risk to P cycling processes in soil, although the results do suggest that these two are more toxic than copper hydroxide to N cycling processes in soil. Moreover, captan and trifloxystrobin compounds are unlikely to pose a long-term risk to soil microbial function as they are unlikely to persist in soil at concentrations found to cause an adverse effect on urease activity. Nonetheless, the potential disruption to N cycling processes needs to be recognised and consideration given to limiting the annual applications of these fungicides, particularly around the timing of repeat fungicide applications, to prevent accumulation of the fungicides in surface soils.