Pesticides have made huge contributions to mankind by reducing the number of diseases and pests typical of each crop, as well as weeds and increasing production widespread use of herbicides, despite their beneficial effects on agricultural production, may constitute a threat to the environment. The accumulation of active substances in soil, depending on their half-time life, can affect not only the target species but also non-target ones. Pendimethalin is an extensively used pre-emergent herbicide in vegetable crops, including for onion or garlic. The aim of the study is the assessment of the potential cytotoxic effect using the Allium assay. Allium sp. are very sensitive to different potential harmful elements for the environment. As biologic material were used 10 healthy Allium cepa L. same size bulbs (4.4 ± 0.3 g) for each experimental variant. For 4 days all bulbs were grown in tap water in tanks (10/20/10 cm). After this period the bulbs were placed in 5 experimental variants: Control – tap water; E1-E4 - increasing concentrations of the herbicide solution (1.365 – 4.550 g l-1 pendimethalin). The solutions in tanks were renewed at each 24 h. After 48, when the length of the root was 15- 20 mm were harvested 3 roots from each plant for cytological investigations. The roots were placed in Carnoy fixing solution for 24 hours, in the refrigerator. The hydrolysis was performed with HCl 1N for 7 minutes at 60°C. The staining was performed with Carr solution. The cytotoxicity was evaluated by the mitotic index (MI), as well as by aberrant divisions counting. All data were processed statistically with STATISTICA 10 software (Basic statistics, 2 way -ANOVA, Duncan test, Correlations). The results show that pendimethalin induces a mitodepressive effect depending on dose correlated with a significant percent of genomic mutations. The frequency of aberrant cells increased significantly with the herbicide concentration. The accumulation of pesticides in the soil can represent an environmental hazard.

cytotoxicity, Pendimethalin, Allium test

biology

Presentation: oral