LOVE TO HATE” pesticides: felicity or curse for the soil microbial community? An FP7 IAPP Marie Curie project aiming to establish tools for the assessment of the mechanisms controlling the interactions of pesticides with soil microorganisms

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international 2016-09, Vol.23 (18), p.18947-18951
• Main Authors: Karpouzas, D. G., Tsiamis, G., Trevisan, M., Ferrari, F., Malandain, C., Sibourg, O., Martin-Laurent, F.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agricultural land; Agriculture; Agrochemicals; Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Bacteria; Biodegradation; Biodegradation, Environmental; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecotoxicology; Energy sources; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Health; Environmental Monitoring - methods; Environmental Monitoring - standards; Environmental risk; Environmental Sciences; Enzymes; Hate; Laboratories; Life Sciences; Love; Microorganisms; Pesticide toxicity; Pesticides; Pesticides - analysis; Pesticides - toxicity; Research and Education Highlights; Risk assessment; Soil; Soil contamination; Soil Microbiology; Soil microorganisms; Soil Pollutants - analysis; Soil Pollutants - toxicity; Soils; Taxonomy; Toxicity; Vegetal Biology; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control
• ISSN: 0944-1344; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-016-7319-4

Pesticides end up in soil where they interact with soil microorganisms in various ways. On the Yin Side of the interaction, pesticides could exert toxicity on soil microorganisms, while on the Yang side of interaction, pesticides could be used as energy source by a fraction of the soil microbial community. The LOVE TO HATE project is an IAPP Marie Curie project which aims to study these complex interactions of pesticides with soil microorganisms and provide novel tools which will be useful both for pesticide regulatory purposes and agricultural use. On the Yin side of the interactions, a new regulatory scheme for assessing the soil microbial toxicity of pesticides will be proposed based on the use of advanced standardized tools and a well-defined experimental tiered scheme. On the Yang side of the interactions, advanced molecular tools like amplicon sequencing and functional metagenomics will be applied to define microbes that are involved in the rapid transformation of pesticides in soils and isolate novel pesticide biocatalysts. In addition, a functional microarray has been designed to estimate the biodegradation genetic potential of the microbial community of agricultural soils for a range of pesticide groups.