Revista de Ecología y Toxicología

Abstracto

Effects of Organophosphate Herbicides on Biological Organisms in Soil Medium-A Mini Review

Suleiman Usman, Abbakar Musa Kundiri and Maximillien Nzamouhe

Herbicides are toxic agrochemicals, which have being used to fight against the existence of weeds in the agricultural farms and gardens. To some extent, these herbicides are rampantly used by farmers without considering the long or short term effects in soil medium. The aim of this paper was to provide a synopsis review of the effects of some organophosphate herbicides to soil biological community. It is evident that most of these herbicides may cause the reduction of sensitive populations of certain groups of biota in soil medium. This paper reported that the effect of organophosphate herbicides on soil biota is considerable. For example, Paraquat and round-up treated soils has been noted to cause decrease in heterotrophic aerobic bacterial count (HAB) and fungal population. It is believe that in cases where these herbicides are used to treat soils, they are considered harmful to nematode, earthworms and other biological organisms. They suppress the biodiversity of soil microbes, hinder the decomposition of soil organic matter and altered plant biomass. They also obstruct the biological activities of soil biota, photosynthetic, biosynthetic reaction, cell growth/divisions and molecular composition of soil biota. Understanding these effects is vital for variety of agricultural purposes including ensuring healthy soil and crop yield conditions, water sanitation, environmental quality and human health developments.