An agroecological innovation: pesticides sequestration

Abstract

For some pesticides known remediation strategies are not always feasible from a technical point of view (phytoextraction and microbial degradation) or not acceptable from a financial or ecological point of view (excavation and chemical process). Beyond extraction and degradation, pesticide sequestration in soils could be an alternative way to control further release of pollutants from contaminated soils towards other environmental compartments. Thus, the incorporation of organic matter in soils improves the sequestration of chlorodecone (kepone), an organochlorine insecticide tightly trapped in the soil. Thus, although contaminated, the soil will release the pollutant into the environment, only to a lesser extent. This method of agro-ecological management makes it possible to propose a method that is inexpensive and easy to implement because farmers master it, while waiting for effective and sustainable decontamination processes.