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Adsorption and degradation of the herbicide nicosulfuron in a stagnic Luvisol and Vermic Umbrisol cultivated under conventional or conservation agriculture

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Abstract

The main goals of conservation agriculture are to enhance soil fertility and reduce soil degradation, especially through erosion. However, conservation agriculture practices can increase the risk of contamination by pesticides, mainly through vertical transfer via water flow. Better understanding of their sorption and degradation processes is thus needed in conservation agriculture as they control the amount of pesticide available for vertical transfer. The purpose of our study was to investigate the sorption and degradation processes of nicosulfuron in soil profiles (up to 90 cm deep) of a Vermic Umbrisol and a Stagnic Luvisol managed either in conventional or in conservation agriculture. Two laboratory sorption and incubation experiments were performed. Low sorption was observed regardless of the soil type, agricultural management or depth, with a maximum value of 1.3 ± 2.0 L kg−1. By the end of the experiment (91 days), nicosulfuron mineralisation in the Vermic Umbrisol was similar for the two types of agricultural management and rather depended on soil depth (29.0 ± 2.3% in the 0–60-cm layers against 7.5 ± 1.4% in the 60–90 cm). In the Stagnic Luvisol, nicosulfuron mineralisation reached similar value in every layer of the conservation agriculture plot (26.5% ± 0.7%). On the conventional tillage plot, mineralisation decreased in the deepest layer (25–60 cm) reaching only 18.4 ± 6.9% of the applied nicosulfuron. Regardless of the soil type or agricultural management, non-extractable residue formation was identified as the main dissipation process of nicosulfuron (45.1 ± 8.5% and 50.2 ± 7.0% under conventional and conservation agriculture respectively after 91 days). In our study, nicosulfuron behaved similarly in the Vermic Umbrisol regardless of the agricultural management, whereas the risk of transfer to groundwater seemed lower in the Stagnic Luvisol under conservation agriculture.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Déborah Mouquet, Yolaine Delaunay, Valérie Bergheaud, Marjolaine Bourdat-Deschamps, Valentin Serre, Nathalie Bernet and Ghislaine Delarue for helping with the experiment.

Funding

This study was financially supported by the Agence de l’Eau Adour-Garonne and Occitanie Region (BAG’AGES and BAG’AGES CISOL projects).

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  1. Université de Toulouse, INRAE, UMR AGIR, 31326, Castanet-Tolosan, France

    Sixtine Cueff & Lionel Alletto

  2. Université Paris-Saclay, INRAE, AgroParisTech, UMR ECOSYS, 78850, Thiverval-Grignon, France

    Sixtine Cueff, Valérie Dumény, Pierre Benoit & Valérie Pot

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  1. Sixtine Cueff
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SC, LA, PB and VP conceived and designed research. SC and VD conducted the chemical analysis. SC, LA, PB and VP wrote the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Cueff, S., Alletto, L., Dumény, V. et al. Adsorption and degradation of the herbicide nicosulfuron in a stagnic Luvisol and Vermic Umbrisol cultivated under conventional or conservation agriculture. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 15934–15946 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11772-2

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