Bioremediation of Pesticides in Soil Through Composting: Potential and Challenges

Abstract

Agriculture plays a major role in India's socioeconomic fabric and pesticide use has become standard practice. The pesticides are primarily utilized for increased food production by controlling agricultural pests. Each year, 50 million tonnes of pesticides are consumed across India. However, only less than 0.1{\%} of employed pesticide will effectively reach the target. The remaining pesticides are found to be tenacious in the environment having a half-life of 15--30 years. This residual pesticide causes toxic effects in the nontarget organisms by contaminating the soil, water, and air through several pathways such as runoff, sorption, photolysis, and leaching. The soil contamination is highly crucial because it is the part of many biological cycles and serves as a habitat for humans, flora, fauna, and other living organisms. Hence, it is of prime importance to mitigate or possibly eliminate pesticide concentration from the soil. Several physical, chemical, and biological techniques are available for removing pesticides. The physical and chemical techniques can separate, immobilize, and transform pesticides into a less toxic form. The use of physical and chemical techniques in agriculture is limited as it modifies the properties of soil and makes it unfit for crop production. Thus, an environmentally friendly and economically viable biological technique, viz. composting has gained importance for remediating pesticide-contaminated soils. The composting practice is one of the promising techniques, as it has high removal efficiency and yields useful end products. Although composting has several benefits the studies available in the Indian context are scarce. Hence to highlight the importance, this chapter reviews the present status of pesticide consumption in India, pesticide transport mechanism in the soil, its effect on human health, and case studies related to pesticide composting.