ABSTRACT
In modern agriculture, pesticide plays a significant role in preventing diseases of insects, pests, and weeds, in enabling stable and high production yields of crops, and in raising the quality of agricultural products. Although pesticides are necessary in agricultural production, they can also be toxic chemicals, and more and more people have become highly concerned by their effect on the ecosystem. The law that pesticides should be registered before they are allowed to be widely used came into effect in China in 1982. The dissipation rate of most pesticides in soil would be obviously lower in sterilized soil than that in nonsterilized soil and microbial degradation critically influences the fate, residue, and behavior of pesticide in soil. Zhang et al. did the comparison for the toxicity of carbofuran to the earthworm in three major soil types of China as well as in the standard soil.
