Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Gradutate School of Agricure
Department of International Environmental and Agricultural Sciences (IEAS)            





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Pesticide Fate and Transport Laboratory

1.  Introduction

 Synthetic organic pesticides have become a major element in modern agricultural production  and the use of pesticides has become an integral part of modern farm management and important for increasing labor efficiency and land productivity as well as increasing the quality and commercial value of the productions. Therefore, during process of transition toward sustainable agriculture, the modern technology application has brought not only conveniences but also problems such as pesticide pollution. Extensive use of pesticide in fields in company with inappropriate field management is probably the main cause of significant pesticide concentration in water body, which may pose eco-toxicological effects to aquatic ecosystem and for human health. Monitoring of pesticide concentration in river systems in Japan indicated that number of herbicides commonly used in paddy fields have been detected.

 

 

2.  Research objectives

 In order to improve water quality affected by agricultural chemicals, we would like to contribute our effort on following objectives:

1.        Investigate mechanisms of pesticide fate and transport 

2.        Monitor pesticide fate and transport in aquatic environments

3.        Develop simulation models for pesticide fate and transport

4.        Develop Best Management Practice or Good Agricultural Practice for reducing pesticide losses from agricultural fields.

5.        Environmental risk assessments 

 

3.  Projects

3.1.Recent and current topic of monitoring and modeling of pesticide fate and transport were listed below

  • Monitoring of pesticide behavior in upland field condition (Piyanuch et al., 2015) and laboratory condition (Piyanuch et al., 2017)
  • Developing a simulation model for pesticide dissipation from upland field (SPEC) (Boulange et al., 2016) and improvement of the SPEC model .
  • Investigation of pesticide losses through rainfall-runoff process. Transport of radioactive cesium from agricultural fields under simulated rainfall in Fukushima was conducted in the laboratory (Unpublished) and field scale (Phong et al., 2015).
  •   Development of pesticide runoff module (project in progress)
  • Basin scale modeling of pesticide transport. Development and validation of a basin scale model PCPF-1@SWAT for simulating fate and transport of rice pesticides (Boulange et al., 2014) was carried out and improvement of the model and related module were in the progress.
  • Monitoring of soil moisture behavior for efficient irrigation management (project in progress).

 

3.2. Previous study has been focused in modeling and monitoring of rice pesticides in rice paddy environment. Topics and selected reference were listed below.

?  Monitoring pesticide fate and transport in paddy environments in multiple scales  of lysimeter scale(Nhung et al., 2009, Thuyet et al., 2012; Ok et al.,2012 ), Plot scale (Thuyet et al., 2013 Thuyet et al., 2011 , and watershed scale (Boulange et al., 2014).

?  Development of plot scale models, PCPF-1 (Watanabe et al., 2006) for granule pesticides, PCPF-NB(Boulange et al., 2016), for nursery box applied pesticides, and block scale model PCPF-B (Phong et al., 2011) for simulating pesticide behavior in rice paddy environments.

?  Also, through the monitoring and modeling, probabilistic risk assessment of pesticide discharge associated with local weather conditions and water management practice was conducted (Kondo et al., 2012). The Best Management Practices (BMPs) or Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) for reducing pesticide losses from paddy rice field including Water Holding Period and Excess Water Storage Depth has been evaluated and recommended.

?  A number of international cooperation projects has been done so far.

?  JSPS Sakura project investigated and developed a model for pesticide model coupled with solute transport model to simulate the behavior of pesticide movement in paddy soil with French scientist (Tounebize et al., 2006).

?  Our PCPF-1 model was used to simulate pesticide fate in rice paddy in Italian condition (Karpouzas et al., 2006) and simulated California (USA) scenarios(Luo et al., 2011).