HERBICIDES IN MATO GROSSO: STUDIES ON ENVIRONMENTAL RISK AND BIOREMEDIATION POTENTIAL
Diuron; Terbuthylazine; Mato Grosso; Environmental Toxicology; Micorremediation.
Due to high agricultural productivity, the state of Mato Grosso is one of the largest consumers of herbicides in the country. This high use can cause environmental risks, especially for non-target organisms. Understanding the potential impacts of the different herbicides used is key to mitigating them. A sustainable strategy to reduce environmental impacts is bioremediation, which uses living organisms and their metabolism to transform xenobiotics into less toxic compounds or mineralize them. In this context, this dissertation is structured in two complementary chapters, with the purpose of: i) knowing the Environmental Risk Index (ERI) of the herbicides commonly used in the main agricultural crops of the State of Mato Grosso and ii) evaluating the potential of macrofungi for herbicide bioremediation. To this end, the first chapter presents the performance of a descriptive and bibliographic study on a set of physicochemical properties of the active ingredients (a.i.) of herbicides available in the Pesticide Properties Database (PPDB) of the University of Hertfordshire that enabled the calculation of the determination of the IRA of the main herbicides used in soybean, corn and cotton crops. The herbicides glyphosate, atrazine, 2,4-D are the most used in the crops evaluated, representing 76.80%. Among the herbicides evaluated, a.i. atrazine and monosodium methylarsonate (MSMA) have the highest ERI (27), followed by trifluralin (22), terbuthylazine and diuron (16), although some have low ERI, a higher use represents a greater risk. The second chapter presents the results of in vitro assays that evaluated the tolerance level of four species of macrofungi and their potential in the production of an enzyme involved in the degradation of xenobiotics (laccase), in the presence and absence of different concentrations of the herbicides diuron and terbuthylazine. The macrofungus Hypoxylon fendleri SA41 stood out for presenting better fungal growth rates (FC) in the treatments with both herbicides evaluated, while Lentinus crinitus SA37 stood out for presenting statistically similar growth between the treatments and laccase enzymatic activity in the presence of diuron (IU L-1 = 4.17 ± 5.1). These results contribute to the understanding of the dynamics and distribution of herbicides in the region as well as to signal sustainable alternatives to minimize the effects of environmental contamination on Mato Grosso agroecosystems.