The use of pesticides in modern agriculture is unavoidable because they are required to control weeds. Pesticides are poisonous; hence, they are dangerous if misused. Understanding the fate of pesticides will be useful to use them safely. Therefore, contaminations of water and soil resources could be avoided. The fates of pesticides in soils are influenced by their sorption, decomposition and m...

Title of Thesis: THATCH AND SOIL PESTICIDE DEGRADATION AND MICROBIAL ACTIVITY AS INFLUENCED BY TURF CULTIVATION PRACTICES Yusong Mu, Master of Science, 2009 Thesis Directed By: Mark J. Carroll, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture Pesticide degradation in turf is complicated by presence of an organic matter enriched layer called thatch. It is not well...

Public demand for safer, environmentally-benign alternatives to synthetic chemical pesticides and more stringent barriers put in place by regulatory agencies worldwide has led to increased interest in microbial pest control agents (MPCA) based on viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes as the active ingredient. The MPCA market has recently experienced an increase of 47% between 2004/20...

Plant protection against pathogens, pests and weeds has been progressively reoriented from a therapeutic approach to a rational use of pesticide chemicals in which consumer health and environmental preservation prevail over any other productive or economic considerations. Microbial pesticides are being introduced in this new scenario of crop protection and currently several beneficial microorga...

Pesticide effects on microbial community structure and activity in soil are reviewed, showing that methodological developments within the past few years have generated new possibilities for assessing pesticide effects. The first example is the use of mRNA quantification showing that nitrification processes are indeed very susceptible to some pesticides, and that there is correlation between the...

The manufacturing and use of pesticides has been rising tremendously in India. The waste generated by the pesticide industry has become an environmental problem due to the present insufficient and ineffective waste treatment technology involving physico-chemical and biological treatment. The available data indicates that pesticide residues remain in surface soil, leading to toxicity in the soil...

Pesticides have a pervasive presence in aquatic ecosystems throughout the world. While pesticides are intended to control fungi, insects, and other pests, their mechanisms of action are often not specific enough to prevent unintended effects, such as on non-target microbial populations. Microorganisms, including algae and cyanobacteria, protozoa, aquatic fungi, and bacteria, form the basis of m...

With the establishment of the National Institutes of Biotechnology and Applied Microbiology (BIOTECH), University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) researches were done to look for cheaper and locally available but efficient substitutes or supplements to inorganic fertilizer, such as bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides. Technologies on bio-fertilizers developed by UPLB include BIO-N, the most ...

Atrazine, metolachlor, carbaryl, and chlorothalonil are detected in streams throughout the U.S. at concentrations that may have adverse effects on benthic microbes. Sediment samples were exposed to these pesticides to quantify responses of ammonium, nitrate, and phosphate uptake by the benthic microbial community. Control uptake rates of sediments had net remineralization of nitrate (-1.58 NO3 ...