Investigation of Sensitivity of Some Pulses and Agronomic Crops to Soil Residue of Idosulfuron-mesosulfurun Herbicide

To study the sensitivity of chick pea, bean, lentil, rapeseed, sugarbeet and tomato to soil residual concentration of Idosulfuron-mesosulfurun herbicide, an experiment was carried out under controlled conditions at the College of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran, in 2010. The studied factors were the 6 mentioned crops, and 7 levels of soil residual concentration of Idosulfuron-mesosulfurun herbicide (0, 0.0015, 0.0037, 0.0079, 0.015, 0.031 and 0.047 mg per kg of soil). The factorial experiment was carried out as a completely randomized design with three replications. Crop's emergence percentage was determined one week after their emergence. Plant's survival percentage and shoot and root biomass production were measured 30 days after their emergence. Results showed that all mentioned characteristics decreased significantly (P<0.01) in the presence of soil residue of the herbicide. Increasing Idosulfuron-mesosulfurun residual concentration in soil decreased emergence and shoot and root biomass production. Bean had the lowest shoot (44%) and root (66.78%) biomass loss and tomato had the highest shoot (96.38%) and root (89.64%) biomass loss. Based on ED50 index, pea (0.0079 mg/kg soil) was the most tolerant and tomato (0.0003 mg/kg soil) was the most susceptible crop to soil residues of Idosulfuron-mesosulfurun, and other crops ranked in between as: tomato< sugarbeet< rapeseed< lentil< bean< pea. In general, these results showed that soil residue of Idosulfuron-mesosulfurun can injure rotation crops and it is important to consider their sensitivity in rotation programming.