F. Benoit

Effects of fertilizer on insecticides adsorption and biodegradation in crop soils.

Recent organic fertilizer treatments (cow manure, pig slurry, composts, or green manure) simultaneously increase insecticide adsorption onto soil and the insecticide soil persistence, indicating a mechanism of slow release of insecticide into soil by the organic matter. This occurred in sugar beet crops with aldicarb, thiofanox and imidacloprid; also, in leek, cauliflower and brussels sprouts crops with chlorpyrifos and chlorfenvinphos. In contrast, organic fertilizer treatments applied once or repeatedly in the past, have no significant influence on adsorption or persistence of insecticides; the same is observed for the old soil organic matter, when its soil concentrations change in limited ranges.

Influence of cow manure and composts on the effects of chlorfenvinphos on field crops.

Cauliflower crops were grown in several regions and seasons (spring and summer). Five days after planting, the plants were treated against the root fly by pouring onto soil around the plant stem an emulsion of chlorfenvinphos [2-chloro-1-(2,4-dichlorophenyl) ethenyl diethyl phosphate] in water. The fields were divided into plots. Onto each plot, one of the organic fertilizers, city refuse compost, mushroom cultivation compost, or cow manure was applied at the rate of 100 tons/ha, 1 or 3.5 months before the insecticide treatment. There were also control plots which were not treated with any of the organic fertilizers. During the first 50 days crop period which followed the insecticide treatment, the chlorfenvinphos soil concentrations were always greater in the organic fertilizer-treated plots, than in the untreated ones (controls). The intensity of the organic fertilizers effect as to the increase of chlorfenvinphos soil persistence was in the following increasing order: city refuse compost < cow manure < mushroom cultivation compost. The organic fertilizer effects were greater when they had been soil-incorporated 3.5 months—instead of 1 month—before the chlorfenvinphos soil treatment. The increase of the insecticide soil concentrations—due to the organic fertilizers treatments—should increase the plant protection efficiency during the period of the first 50 days, during which time the young plants are the most sensitive to insects. During the following period of the 2 or 3 last crop weeks, the effects of the organic fertilizers onto the rate of chlorfenvinphos soil metabolism were levelled off; at harvest, the very low soil-resting residues were similar in the organic fertilizers treated and untreated plots. At harvest, no chlorfenvinphos nor its metabolites were detected in the ‘flower’ of cauliflower of all the plots, the analytical limit of sensitivity being 0.02 mg kg−1 fresh weight for all of these compounds.

Herbicides interactions with cow manure and field soil organic matter

Abstract The direct interaction of the herbicide metazachlor ‐chosen as an example‐ with the soil organic matter has been studied by laboratory incubation of old and young cow manures containing metazachlor. The extraction efficiencies of solvents of increasing polarities indicated the formation of association compounds by bonds weaker than covalent between metazachlor and the organic matter: electron donor‐acceptor complexes, hydrogen bonding complexes, and complexes by both bonding types. Laboratory incubation of metazachlor in soil of low organic matter content indicated that the soil mineral part only had a diluting effect on the soil organic matter capacity to adsorb metazachlor. Similar association compounds were observed in the soil of a cauliflower field crop. Their concentrations were greater in the plots treated with organic fertilizers than in the organic fertilizers untreated plots. The free‐ unbound metazachlor was faster metabolized than the one bound to the soil organic matter, explaining w...