Evaluating the Effect of Pendimethalin Herbicide Residue on Wheat and Barely

Nowadays, herbicides are crucial for modern agricultural systems. Yet, improper application of herbicides will have dangerous consequences. For example, there will be crop damage due to long lasting herbicide residue or herbicide drift on neighbor crops if applied on non-target species. The purpose of this experiment was to determine the sensitivity of wheat and barley to pendimethalin residue by using bioassay.

In order to evaluate soil residue of pendimethalin, experiments with completely randomized designs were carried out in the greenhouse at Faculty of Agricluture and Natural Resources of Gonbad Kavous University. In this experiments, different doses of pendimethalin (0, 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 75 and 100 % of recommended dose) were applied on wheat and barley in order to measure the dry weight of root and shoot of crops. The concentration of herbicides was made by dilution of stock solvent. Three/four-parameter log-logistic curves were used for fitness of the data.

Results indicated that almost all data followed the three-parameter logarithm logistic curve. Results of separate fitness of data showed that the residue of pendimethalin always caused reduction of dry weight of the evaluated crops. Fifty percent reduction of shoot dry weight of wheat and barley was obtained from 400.5 and 623.05 g.a.i.ha-1 of pendimethalin and the ED50 values of root dry weight of wheat and barley were 65.88 and 269.66 g.a.i.ha-1 of pendimethalin, respectively.

Generally, the results of simultaneously fitted data shows that wheat is always more sensitive to pendimethalin rather than barley. Based on results, even the very little portion of herbicides can cause damage to crops, thus, considering the sensitive crop in rotation is so important since this residue can stay active even in two-season crops and make crop injuries. The selection between 3 and 4 Logarithm logistic model was based on: 1. Lack of fit test significance 2. Significance of estimated parameters, especially the parameters and the way of distribution of data around the curve (graphical observation).