Pratik Choudhari, Rashmi Urkude and Varsha Dhurvey
Abstract
To meet the food demands of the rapidly increasing global population, pesticides have been widely applied to enhance agricultural productivity. However, their extensive and indiscriminate use has raised serious environmental concerns. The present studies revealed the effect of commonly used pesticides on soil micro organisms, this effect was measured in form of CO2 evolution. The studies were undertaken with the aim to analyse the effect of commonly used pesticides like Lambda cyhalothrin and Indoxacarb on microbial activities in the soil from Nagpur, Maharashtra region. Both pesticides were separately added to the soil at concentration 0,5,10,15,20,50 and 100 ppm and incubated in laboratory conditions for 50 days. Microbial activities in soil were measured in the form of CO2 evolution during incubation at 5, 20, 35 and 50 days intervals. With Lambda cyhalothrin (2.91 to 2.62 mg/g) and Indoxacarb (2.81to 2.32 mg/g) after 50 days of incubation the experiment specified the trend of a gradual decrease in CO2 evolved as compared to the control (without fortification with pesticides). However, the application of Lambda-cyhalothrin and Indoxacarb did not adversely affect the soil microflora. These studies suggested that Lambda cyhalothrin and Indoxacarb did not show any adverse effect on microflora in soil.