22 Jun New doctoral thesis on the use and potential effect of pesticides in the soil-plant system in Galicia (Spain)
Raquel Chaves Padín defended last June 12 her PhD thesis titled “Review of the agricultural use of pesticides in Galicia (Spain) and its behavior in the soil.” The act took place in the Faculty of Biology of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC). Raquel carried out this work in the CRETUS (Cross-Research in Environmental Technologies) Strategic Partnership, under the direction of Dr. Carmen Monterroso and Felipe Macías, who also participate in the PhytoSUDOE project.
An inventory of the pesticides used in Galicia (Spain) during the XX century, and the geographic analysis of its use, is the main contribution of this work. This inventory includes 176 active substances, of which 78 are currently banned, belonging to more than 50 chemical families. Soil analysis showed that many of these substances, especially organochlorinated pesticides, persist at much higher levels than currently permitted. This work also provides an exhaustive study of interactions of persistent pesticides with soil components. A dynamic modelling of the lindane, an obsolete pesticide of great environmental concern, in a soil-pay-air-plant system closes this work.
The results of this thesis facilitate the location of contaminated areas, susceptible to be treated by the techniques developed by PhytoSUDOE, and improve our understanding of the behavior of organochlorine contaminants in the soil-plant system. In addition, the developed dynamic-model will be a very useful tool to both simulate phytomanagement options and optimize the system parameters.