Pesticide application has increased globally with increasing demand for food, and modernized Agriculture as a result of an explosion in the world’s population growth, especially in developing nations in Africa, Asia, and South America. However, pesticides have helped to improve productivity, protect the nutritive integrity of food crops, and ensure year-round food supplies worldwide. The production and consumption of pesticides persisted from one decade to another until the ecosystem started to suffer from its adverse effects on the environment and human health. Previous investigations revealed that pesticides found entry into the human food chain. In response to these problems, researchers all over the world have conducted several kinds of research on pesticide applications, and their residual contamination in food. This review crosses from the past to present researches on the usage of pesticides, their accumulation in food, and possible methods of their reduction as highlighted by researchers over many years. There is a need for continuous monitoring of pesticide residue profile in soil, crop produce, and animal products in developing countries so that it will not exceed maximum residue limits (MRLs).

In Mirzapur (U.P.), a power-starved district, the UASB (Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket) technique was adopted. Almost all of the available technologies do not treat heavy metals, so, is the case with the UASB also. The present study is to assess how much heavy metal can get accumulated in plant tissues in different species. The result of the present study was that the concentration of Pb(1106.31)>Zn(221.45)>Cd(49.26)>Hg(23.37) mg/Kg in the sludge while the concentration of Zn(93.35)>Pb(52.00)>Hg(16.93)>Cd(1.53) mg/Kg in the soil. When the sludge was mixed with the soil the trend got changed and the trend was Pb(596.36)>Zn(219.86)>Cd(24.70)>Hg(22.63) mg/Kg. Three different species that were chosen for the study were Basella Alba (Spinach), Solanum Lycopersicum (Tomato) & Brassica Juncea (Mustard). The trend of accumulation of studied heavy metals in the Brassica Juncea (Mustard) was Zn(85.33)>Pb(25.88)>Hg(11.23)>Cd(0.99) mg/Kg. In Solanum lycopersicum (Tomato) the trend was Pb(231.11)>Zn(108.72)>Hg(12.43)>Cd(9.41) mg/Kg  and in Basella alba (Spinach) was Zn(103.81)>Pb(83.90)>Hg(10.78)>Cd(4.18) mg/Kg. Overall the study reveals that the accumulation of heavy metals takes place in plants grown in soil mixed with sewage sludge. The reduction in the concentration of Pb, Cd, Hg and Zn in sludge mixed with soil after the harvesting of plant in case of Solanum lycopersicum were 39.38%, 47.93%, 6.18% and 49.89% respectively; while in case of Basella alba these were 25.23%, 57.53%, 71.58% and 49.16% respectively; and in case of Brassica Juncea these reduction were 25.86%, 60.80%, 70.96% and 49.04% respectively.

Les territoires périurbains, zones de transition entre les zones urbaines et rurales, sont soumis à de nombreuses pollutions à la fois gazeuses et particulaires. Ces pollutions proviennent de sources locales comme les activités résidentielles, le trafic routier et les activités agricoles, mais également de sources régionales issues des activités urbaines et des émissions des zones (pseudo-)naturelles adjacentes. Cet article présente une synthèse des différentes sources de pollution affectant la qualité de l’air en milieu périurbain. Il est évident que les pollutions purement anthropiques ne peuvent être dissociées de celles issues du fonctionnement des écosystèmes (pseudo-)naturels dans ces espaces. Enfin, les enjeux vis-à-vis de l’agriculture périurbaine, fortement présente et en développement du fait d’une volonté de consommer des productions locales, sont discutés. | Periurban areas, zone of transition between urban and rural areas, are submitted to several sources of pollution, both gaseous and particulate. These pollutions originate from local sources such as residential sector, traffic road and agricultural activities, but also from regional ones from adjacent urban and (pseudo-)natural areas. This paper presents a synthesis of the different sources affecting air quality in periurban areas. It is clear that pollutions from anthropogenic activities cannot be fully dissociated to those from (pseudo-)natural ecosystem functioning in these areas. Finally, the atmospheric pollution issues are discussed in emphasis with periurban agriculture, already present and under development in these areas due to the development of short food supply chains and local food consumptions.

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PR | IFPRI3; ISI; CRP3.2; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies | Development Strategies and Governance (DSG); Transformation Strategies | CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE)

International audience | Azoles represent the most used family of organic fungicides worldwide and they are used in agriculture to circumvent the detrimental impact of fungi on yields. Although it is known that these triazoles can contaminate the air, the soil, and the water, field data are currently and dramatically lacking to assess if, and to what extent, the use of triazoles could contaminate non-target wild vertebrate species, notably in agroecosystems. In this study, we aimed to document for the first time the degree of blood contamination of a generalist wild bird species by multiple azoles which are used for plant protection and fungi pest control in various habitats. We deployed passive air samplers and captured 118 Common blackbirds (Turdus merula) in an agroecosystem (vineyard), a protected forest, and a city in western France. We collected blood and analyzed the plasma levels of 13 triazoles and 2 imidazoles. We found that a significant percentage of blackbirds living in vineyards have extremely high plasma levels of multiple azoles (means (pg.g⁻¹); tebuconazole: 149.23, difenoconazole: 44.27, fenbuconazole: 239.38, tetraconazole: 1194.16), while contamination was very limited in the blackbirds from the protected forest and absent in urban blackbirds. Interestingly, we also report that the contamination of blackbirds living in vineyard was especially high at the end of Spring and the beginning of Summer and this matches perfectly with the results from the passive air samplers (i.e., high levels of azoles in the air of vineyards during June and July). However, we did not find any correlation between the levels of plasma contamination by azoles and two simple integrative biomarkers of health (feather density and body condition) in this sentinel species. Future experimental studies are now needed to assess the potential sub-lethal effects of such levels of contamination on the physiology of non-target vertebrate species.

International audience | This study addressed the relative importance of particle coating, sewage sludge amendment, and aging on aggregation and dissolution of manufactured Ag nanoparticles (Ag MNPs) in soil pore water. Ag MNPs with citrate (CIT) or polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) coatings were incubated with soil or municipal sewage sludge which was then amended to soil (1% or 3% sludge (w/w)). Pore waters were extracted after 1 week and 2 and 6 months and analyzed for chemical speciation, aggregation state and dissolution. Ag MNP coating had profound effects on aggregation state and partitioning to pore water in the absence of sewage sludge, but pre-incubation with sewage sludge negated these effects. This suggests that Ag MNP coating does not need to be taken into account to understand fate of AgMNPs applied to soil through biosolids amendment. Aging of soil also had profound effects that depended on Ag MNP coating and sludge amendment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

no sp. Assessment of Nitrogen Fluxes to Air and Water from Site Scale to Continental Scale | The aim of this study is to illustrate the importance of farm scale heterogeneity on nitrogen (N) losses in agricultural landscapes. Results are exemplified with a chain of N models calculating farm-N balances and distributing the N-surplus to N-losses (volatilisation, denitrification, leaching) and soil-N accumulation/release in a Danish landscape. Possible non-linearities in upscaling are assessed by comparing average model results based on (i) individual farm level calculations and (ii) averaged inputs at landscape level. Effects of the non-linearities that appear when scaling up from farm to landscape are demonstrated. Especially in relation to ammonia losses the non-linearity between livestock density and N-loss is significant (p > 0.999), with around 20-30% difference compared to a scaling procedure not taking this non-linearity into account. A significant effect of farm type on soil N accumulation (p > 0.95) was also identified and needs to be included when modelling landscape level N-fluxes and greenhouse gas emissions.

Forest and agricultural land use affects the concentration and composition of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in streams and rivers. To elucidate the impacts of forest and agricultural land use on stream DOC during storm events, we investigated DOC concentration ([DOC]), optical properties of dissolved organic matter (DOM), and Δ¹⁴C-DOC in both forest- and agriculture-dominated headwater streams in South Korea in the summer of 2012. One forested and five agricultural streams were investigated. During storms, the peak [DOC] of forest stream increased to 5.8 mg L⁻¹, approximately two times larger than that of the most agricultural stream (3.2 mg L⁻¹), demonstrating the weaker storm responses of the [DOC] of agricultural streams to hydrological change. Five PARAFAC components were identified, including three terrestrial humic-like substances (C1, C2, C3), one microbial humic substance (C4), and one microbial protein-like substances (C5). The mean (C4+C5)/(C1+C2+C3) of all storm events at the most agricultural stream was 1.5 times larger than that of the most forested stream, suggesting that more protein-like DOM is exported from agricultural watersheds. Whereas a forest stream was primarily composed of terrestrially derived and ¹⁴C-enriched modern DOC, the ¹⁴C-age of the most agricultural stream was up to ∼1000 years old. The results suggest that agricultural practices could decrease the old organic carbon pools from soils. However, how quickly the aged DOC can be degraded to CO₂ in streams is unknown, warranting future investigation on lability of the aged DOC and their effects on CO₂ evasion from rivers and estuaries downstream.