Effect Of Three Commonly Used Insecticides On Earthworm Mortality Under Laboratory Conditions

摘要

Pesticide toxicity in agro-ecosystems undergoes transformational changes and enters into soil ecosystem through pest control programmes and remains in the soil for few days to months, depending on the chemical property of the pesticides used. The indiscriminate and excessive use of pesticides is leading to environmental pollution. Pesticides are generally disastrous for earthworm communities. Earthworms contribute significantly the macro fauna of soil ecosystems, therefore, used to monitor the soil pollution and contamination. The agricultural practices break the sustainability by means of pesticides use which is only selective to target species but it adversely affects various non-target individuals including useful macro and micro fauna. Toxicity of pesticides on earthworms is assessed by performing acute mortality test and it was concluded that insecticide imidacloprid and monocrotophos are toxic to earthworms in the soil based on agriculture recommended dose and rate of application whereas chlorpyrifos observed less toxic to earthworms during the present investigations.