Measuring the effects of pesticides on bacterial communities in soil: A critical review

Extensive application of industrially-produced pesticides in agriculture has resulted in contamination of soil ecosystems. A variety of both cultivation-dependent and cultivation-independent methods can be applied to measure and interpret the effects of pesticide exposure. We review here the expanding panel of these methods in the specific context of responses of the soil bacterial microflora to pesticide exposure, and of ongoing advances in microbial molecular ecology, including metagenomics and new approaches for DNA sequencing. Several issues still need to be addressed in order to routinely evaluate the effect of pesticides on bacterial communities in soil in the future, and to make way for a widely accepted framework for risk assessment in agro-ecosystems that include bacterial indicators.

► We present tools for characterising pesticide-induced responses of soil bacteria.
► We review the relationship between pesticide exposure and bacterial communities.
► The evaluation of pesticide-induced tolerance of soil bacteria is addressed.