Pesticide sorption and effects of biochar Mobile researcher: Veronika Tatarková, Slovakia

The project "Pesticide sorption and effects of biochar" is a part of an important European Union`s project called Genesis. The Genesis project is focused on the investigation of behaviour of several pesticides in the environment, including their sorption, desorption, degradation in soil, transport from soil surface into deeper soil horizons, surface water, ground water and into the atmosphere. The sorption of pesticides in soil is a key process affecting the fate of these pollutants in the environment and it is influenced by many factors such as, physico-chemical properties of soil and pesticides, climatic conditions, soil management. The presence of other substances e.g. fertilizers, organic acids, pyrolysed ash and biochar in soil might have the influen ce on the pesticides retention as well. Because of fire events that sometimes occur during hot and rainless summers, pyrolysed biochar and ash are often present in agricultural soils and also in forest soils. Moreover, ash and biochar are in some cases ap plied on fields as fertilizers and so their concentration in soil increases. The investigation of the sorption of some widely used pesticides in the European agriculture in soils with added biochar is the main aim of the project. Sorption experiments wi ll be realized in the laboratory conditions using batch equilibrium method. Sorption intensity of several pesticides in pure soils and in soils with different biochar addition will be compared. The results will be further used in Genesis project for makin g scenarios in quantitative models and for the evaluation of climate change effect on the pesticide behavior in the environment.