Adsorption-desorption of metalaxyl as affecting dissipation and leaching in soils: role of mineral and organic components

Adsorption-desorption studies of metalaxyl in fifteen agricultural soil samples from Southern Portugal and Spain were performed following a batch equilibration method. Very high sorption was observed on a clay soil of high content in altered illite, but, when this soil was excluded from regression analysis, organic matter (OM) was the most important single soil property affecting sorption at low concentrations of metalaxyl. At higher concentrations, no correlation was observed with any soil property. The relevance of OM on sorption was also corroborated by the increase in sorption coefficients when soil OM was increased artificially by the addition of an organic amendment. Sorption studies with the colloidal fraction of selected soils also revealed the importance of mineral surfaces in metalaxyl sorption. Sorption of metalaxyl in most of the soil samples was hysteretic. Selected soil samples were incubated in the dark, sampled periodically and extracted for their fungicide content. Metalaxyl half-lives increased with sorption and OM content of the soil, and were specially high in the amended soil. Leaching studies in hand-packed columns under saturated/unsaturated flow conditions showed an inverse relation between leaching and sorption. Recoveries from the soil columns were close to 80% of the metalaxyl applied, except for the soil which OM was artificially increased, in which recovery was lower and this has been attributed to the much higher irreversibility of metalaxyl sorption in the amended soil.