Types Of Agrochemicals Research Articles

An Overview of Impact of Agrochemicals on Human Health and Natural Environment

Agrochemicals exposure periods and levels, types of agrochemicals used and various environmental condition of the areas are factors for acute and chronic poisoning on human health and environment. Although agrochemicals are the result of modern technology that depends on inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, their continuous use against agricultural pest and disease vectors poses serious threats upon both human health and environment. Overuse of these chemicals have severe effects on human and environment that may lead to immediate and long-term effects. In developing countries, it is very difficult to find out the impact on the environment due to lack of awareness, training, and adequate knowledge for using agrochemicals. Investigating farmer’s awareness of agrochemicals residues and their behaviors regarding application is important in order to reduce human factors that negatively affect environmental safety. This review focuses on a summary of both national and international studies regarding the impact of pesticide and chemical fertilizer residues on nature, both human and environment. The review has revealed the hazardous effects like cancer, neural disorders, and other health related problems and environmental risks associated with agrochemicals exposure.

Agrochemicals—The Pesticides Section

The journal Agrochemicals publishes research on the different types of agrochemicals, as depicted in this Editorial [...]

Comprehensive Assessment of the Impact of Various Types of Agrochemicals on the Intake of 137Cs in Pea Plants

Comprehensive Assessment of the Impact of Various Types of Agrochemicals on the Intake of 137Cs in Pea Plants

PRODUCTIVITY CHANGE OF AWNLESS BROME DUE TO APPLICATION OF VARIOUS AGROCHEMICALS

The results of studies of field experiments on possibility of achieving highly productive agrocenoses of awnless brome due to application of various agrochemicals at different times are presented. To achieve the above goal, studies on agrochemical effects on awnless brome seed-breeding plots were carried out in OAO Mordoviagosplem in Ozerny village, the city of Saransk, the Republic of Mordovia in 2018-2020. Scheme of a two-factor experiment included: Factor A - Time of application of agrochemicals. 1 - At the beginning of spring regrowth, 2 - At booting stage, 3 - In the phase of spring regrowth + booting stage. Factor B - Types of agrochemicals. 1. - Without application of agrochemicals (control). 2. - Megamix Profi. 3. - Megamix-nitrogen. 4 - Albite. It was revealed that maximum weight of 25 shoots, compared with the control, was noted in case of Albit application in the phase of growth, tillering, growth + tillering (79.6; 86.0; 87.0 g); Megamix-Profi (80.4; 80.6 g) and Megamix-Nitrogen (84.8; 82.5 g) in the phases of tillering and growth + tillering. The most intensive shoot formation (533 pcs./m2) was noted in case of double application of Albit, its application at the time of spring regrowth provided maximum economic efficiency coefficient (0.04) and aboveground mass yield (18.54 t/ha). Application of Megamix- Nitrogen (531, 466 kg/ha) and Albit (507, 463 kg/ha) in the spring regrowth and booting phase, as well as Megamix-Profi (508 kg/ha) in booting phase contributed to formation of predominant seed yield.

Tolerance and Biological Removal of Fungicides by Trichoderma Species Isolated From the Endosphere of Wild Rubiaceae Plants

The transition from conventional to organic agriculture is often challenged by the adaptation of biological control agents to environments heavily exposed to agrochemical pollutants. We studied Trichoderma species isolated from living leaf tissues of wild Rubiacaeae (coffee family) plants to determine their fungicide tolerance and potential for bioremoval. First, we assessed the in vitro tolerance to fungicides of four Trichoderma isolates (Trichoderma rifaii T1, T. aff. crassum T2, T. aff. atroviride T3, and T. aff. strigosellum T4) by placing mycelial plugs onto solid media supplemented with seven different systemic and non-systemic fungicides. After a week, most of the fungicides did not significantly inhibit the growth of the isolates, except in the case of cyproconazole, where the only isolate able to grow was T1; however, the colony morphology was affected by the presence of fungicides. Second, biological removal potential was established for selected isolates. For this experiment, the isolates T1, T2, and T4 were independently inoculated into liquid media with the fungicides azoxystrobin, chlorothalonil, cyproconazole, and trifloxystrobin. After 14 days of incubation, a removal of up to 89% was achieved for chlorothalonil, 46.4% for cyproconazole, and 33.1% for trifloxystrobin using viable biomass. In the case of azoxystrobin, the highest removal (82.2%) occurred by adsorption to fungal biomass. Ecotoxicological tests in Daphnia magna revealed that T1 has the highest removal potential, achieving significant elimination of every fungicide, while simultaneously detoxifying the aqueous matrix (except in the case of cyproconazole). Isolate T4 also exhibited an intermediate efficiency, while isolate T2 was unable to detoxify the matrix in most cases. The removal and detoxification of cyproconazole failed with all the isolates. These findings suggest that endosphere of wild plants could be an attractive guild to find new Trichoderma species with promising bioremediation capabilities. In addition, the results demonstrate that attention should be placed when combining certain types of agrochemicals with antagonistic fungi in Integrated Pest and Disease Management strategies or when transitioning to organic agriculture.

Smallholder rice farming practices across livelihood strategies: A case study of the Poyang Lake Plain, China

In the past four decades, the livelihood strategies of Chinese smallholder farmers have become increasingly diversified and individualized, and consequently, their rice growing practices have diverged. However, few studies have identified how rice growing practices change with livelihood strategies. To address this challenge, this study employs an integrated smallholder livelihood strategy framework and uses crosssectional data in 2018 covering 250 smallholder farmers who belonging to 90 households in 10 villages in the Poyang Lake Plain, southern China. The results show that livelihood strategies were grouped into five categories based on the allocation of labor input, and the factors that differentiate the farmers adopting rice farming-dominated livelihoods from other farmers include age, sex, education level, health, annual income, the number of appliances and land area. Farmers who relied heavily on rice growing for their livelihoods grew larger area of rice paddy, invested more per unit area, applied more types of agrochemicals and obtained higher unit yields than those farmers spending most of their time on off-farm enterprises. However, the income of the former was much lower than that of the latter due to the low return of rice farming. There is no significant difference in the application weight of agrochemicals across livelihood strategies, which implies that farmers who do not heavily depend on rice growing excessively apply agrochemicals that cannot effectively increase rice yields. Based on these findings, we suggest that the government should implement measures to substantially increase the return of rice growing and educate rice farmers so they will adopt more environmentally friendly practices for applying agrochemicals.

Physicochemical Profiles of the Marketed Agrochemicals and Clues for Agrochemical Lead Discovery and Screening Library Development.

Combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput and virtual screening technologies have been extensively used for discovering agrochemical leads from chemical libraries. The knowledge of the physicochemical properties of the marketed agrochemicals is useful for guiding the design and selection of such libraries. Since the earlier profiling of marketed agrochemicals, the number and types of marketed agrochemicals have significantly increased. Recent studies have shown the change of some physicochemical properties of oral drugs with time. There is a need to also profile the physicochemical properties of the marketed agrochemicals. In this work, we analyzed the key physicochemical properties of 1751 marketed agrochemicals in comparison with the previously-analyzed herbicides and insecticides, 106 391 natural products and 57 548 diverse synthetic libraries compounds. Our study revealed the distribution profiles and evolution trend of different types of agrochemicals that in many respects are broadly similar to the reported profiles for oral drugs, with the most marked difference being that agrochemicals have a lower number of hydrogen bond donors. The derived distribution patterns provided the rule of thumb guidelines for selecting potential agrochemical leads and also provided clues for further improving the libraries for agrochemical lead discovery.

Chronic kidney disease epidemic in Central America: urgent public health action is needed amid causal uncertainty.

Chronic kidney disease epidemic in Central America: urgent public health action is needed amid causal uncertainty.

Acute and joint toxicity of three agrochemicals to Chinese tiger frog (Hoplobatrachus chinensis) tadpoles.

We studied acute and joint toxicity of three different agrochemicals (chlorantraniliprole, flubendiamide-abamectin and penoxsulam) to Chinese tiger frog (Hoplobatrachus chinensis) tadpoles with the method of stability water tests. Results showed that the three agrochemicals increased tadpole mortality. For acute toxicity, the LC50 values after 24, 48 and 72 h of chlorantraniliprole, flubendiamide-abamectin and penoxsulam exposure were 5.37, 4.90 and 4.68 mg/L; 0.035, 0.025 and 0.021 mg/L; 1.74, 1.45 and 1.29 mg/L, respectively. The safety concentrations (SC) of chlorantraniliprole, flubendiamide-abamectin and penoxsulam to the tadpoles were 1.23, 0.30 and 0.003 mg/L, respectively. Based on these findings, chlorantraniliprole and penoxsulam were moderately toxic, while flubendiamide-abamectin was highly toxic. All pairwise joint toxicity tests showed moderate toxicity. The LC50 values after 24, 48 and 72 h of exposure were 7.08, 6.61 and 6.03 mg/L for chlorantraniliprole+penoxsulam, with corresponding values of 2.455, 2.328 and 2.183 mg/L for chlorantraniliprole+flubendiamide-abamectin, and 1.132, 1.084 and 1.050 mg/L for penoxsulam+flubendiamide-abamectin, with safe concentrations of 1.73, 0.63 and 0.30 mg/L, respectively. For toxic evaluations of pairwise combinations of the three agrochemicals, only the joint toxicity of chlorantraniliprole and flubendiamide-abamectin after 24 h was found to be synergistic, whereas all other tests were antagonistic. Our findings provide valuable information on the toxic effects of agrochemicals on amphibians and how various types of agrochemicals can be reasonably used in agricultural areas.

Application of ultra-weak photon emission measurements in agriculture

Here we report our two applications of ultra-weak photon emission (UPE) measurements in agriculture. One is to find new types of agrochemicals that potentiate plants’ defense, so-called “plant activator”. We first analyzed the relation between plant defense and Elicitor-Responsive Photon Emission (ERPE) using a combination of rice cells and a chitin elicitor. Pharmacological analyses clarified that ERPE was generated as a part of the chitin elicitor-responsive defense in close relation with the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Then we successfully detected the activity of plant activators as the potentiation of ERPE, and developed a new screening system for plant activators based on this principle. Another UPE application is to distinguish herbicide-resistant weeds from susceptible ones by measuring UPE in weeds. In our study, it was revealed that the weed biotypes resistant to sulfonylurea (SU) herbicides, one of the major herbicide groups, showed stronger UPE than susceptible ones after an SU herbicide treatment. By further analysis with a pharmacological and RNAi study, we found that the detoxifying enzyme P450s contributed to the UPE increase in SU herbicide resistant weeds. It is considered that weeds resistant to herbicides other than SU might also be able to be distinguished from susceptible ones by UPE measurement, as long as the herbicides are subject to detoxification by P450s.

Characterization of Heavy Metals from Banana Farming Soils

AbstractThere is a growing public concern about the contamination of heavy metals in agricultural soils in China due to the increasingly applications of chemical fertilizers and pesticides during the last two decades. This study characterized the variability of heavy metals, including copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and nickel (Ni), from the banana farming soils in western Hainan Island, China. Five banana farms from different locations in the island were selected to collect 69 mixed‐soil samples in this study. Experimental data showed that concentrations of Cu ranged from 3.38 to 54.52, Zn from 24.0 to 189.8, Pb from 15.98 to 58.42, Cd from 0.43 to 3.21, and Ni from 3.47 to 121.86 mg kg−1 dry wt. In general, concentrations of the heavy metals varied with metal species and changed from location to location, which occurred presumably due to the variations of soil parent materials and to a certain extent due to the use of different types of agrochemicals. Our study further revealed that concentrations of Cu and Zn were higher in the banana farming soils than in the natural (control) soils among all of the five locations, whereas mixed results were observed for Pb, Cd, and Ni in both the banana farming and control soils, depending on the locations. Comparisons of the heavy metal concentrations with the Chinese Soil Quality Standards (CSQSs) showed that Cu, Zn, and Pb contents were lower but Cd and Ni contents were higher in the banana farming soils than the Class II standard of the CSQSs. Results suggested that accumulation of Cu, Zn, and Pb in the soils is safe for banana fruit production, whereas accumulation of Cd and Ni in the same soils could potentially pose threats to banana fruit safety.

Fate of Agrochemical Residues, Associated with Malt and Hops, During Brewing

A process for predicting the potential for persistence of agrochemical residue levels in beer has been developed. For this, we first developed analytical methods for determining the agrochemical residues in beer, wort, and various by-products during the brewing processes. Second, various types of agrochemicals were spiked during the mashing, wort boiling, or fermentation processes and the residues in the product and in the by-product were determined with the developed method. Agrochemicals added were representative of the typical chemical groups of agrochemicals for which maximum residual levels in barley or hops are regulated by Japanese official law. Third, the potential for the carryover of agrochemical residues into wort and beer was investigated based on their chemical properties such as thermostability, chemical reactivity, and oil/water solubility (which was expressed as log Pow values). It was found that the carryover of agrochemical residues into wort and beer depended on their log Pow values. The carryover percentages into wort or beer of glyphosate (organophosphorus herbicide) having the lowest log Pow value were more than 90% of the amount added to each process. On the other hand, most of the agrochemicals having a high log Pow value, such as pyrethroid pesticides, were detected in the fractions of the spent grains and spent hops. Some amounts of the added agrochemicals were lost during the wort boiling process. On the other hand, no significant reduction was observed during the fermentation process. None of the agrochemicals spiked in the hop pellets were detected in beer because of the loss during boiling and fermentation, though the levels of the spiked agrochemicals were high enough to be detected in beer if no loss of the spiked agrochemicals had occurred. From these results, the process for predicting the potential for the carryover of agrochemical residues in malt or hops into beer on a laboratory scale was proposed, in that the log Pow values of a agrochemical was effectively used as the primary indicator.