Toxicity and bioremediation of pesticides in agricultural soil

Pesticides are one of the persistent organic pollutants which are of concern due to their occurrence in various ecosystems. In nature, the pesticide residues are subjected to physical, chemical and biochemical degradation process, but because of its high stability and water solubility, the pesticide residues persist in the environment. Moreover, the prevailing environmental conditions like the soil characteristics also contribute for their persistence. Bioremediation is one of the options for the removal of pesticides from environment. One important uncertainty associated with the implementation of bioremediation is the low bioavailability of some of the pesticides in the heterogeneous subsurface environment. Bioavailability of a compound depends on numerous factors within the cells of microorganism like the transportation of susbstrate across cell membrane, enzymatic reactions, biosurfactant production etc. as well as environment conditions such as pH, temperature, availability of electron acceptor etc. Pesticides like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH), Endosulfan, benzene hexa chloride (BHC), Atrazine etc. are such ubiquitous compounds which persist in soil and sediments due to less bioavailability. The half life of such less bioavailable pesticides ranges from 100 to 200 days. Most of these residues get adsorbed to soil particles and thereby becomes unavailable to microbes. In this review, an attempt has been made to present a brief idea on ‘major limitations in pesticide biodegradation in soil’ highlighting a few studies.