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Project properties |
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| Title | How to address soil pollution by pesticides in African soils? |
| Group | Soil Physics and Land Management group |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 24-39 |
| Supervisor(s) | Vera Silva & Xiaomei Yang |
| Examiner(s) | Violette Geissen |
| Contact info | violette.geissen@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2021/05/25 |
| End date | |
| Description | Pesticides are heavily used in agriculture to reduce crop losses due to pests, weeds and pathogens. Between 1961 and 2011 the global agricultural production more than tripled, largely due to pesticide use. Currently, global pesticide use exceeds 4 million tonnes per year. Such long term and intensive pesticides use raises major health and environmental concerns since part of applied products does not reach the target, being instead distributed into the environment. Several pesticide active substances and/or their metabolites are persistent, bio accumulative and/or toxic to non-target species.
Africa is quickly developing a dependency on agricultural pesticides too, being pesticides identified as a key soil indicator in the recently launched Soils 4 Africa project. The aim of Soils 4 Africa is to provide an open access soil information system with a set of key indicators and underpinning data, accompanied with a methodology for repeated soil monitoring across the African continent https://www.soils4africa-h2020.eu/the-project Research Objective/Question Development of an approach for the assessment of soil pollution with pesticides residues What is expected from the student (type of research) - gathering and analyse pesticide use data from public databases - gathering and analyse soil contamination data from and literature - design questionnaires to farmers and retailers on pesticide use and pesticide awareness - processing interviews data Others suggested by the student ... |
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