Promotor: Dr. Pieter Spanoghe
Tutor: Dr Tineke de Wilde

Academiejaar 2009

Pesticide water pollution represents a big challenge since water resources play a preponderant role in our society.
Point source pollution can be responsible of 40-90% of the groundwater contamination.
On-farm biopurification systems were developed to reduce contamination from these sources; however there are still processes that need to be characterized in order to optimize the efficiencey of the systems.

Experiments were performed to assess the influence of flow reates on the leaching potential and degradation of metamitron, bentazone, metalaxyl, isoproturon and linuron.
Three different fluxes (low, intermediate and high) were tested to identify possible effects on transport and degradation. Furthermore, columns containing pesticide primed soil in the matrix were compared with a non-primed pesticide soil.