• Dr. Niti Chawla
• Reena Devi
• Monika Jangra

Pesticides are chemical substances that are used for the protection of crop and vegetables from innumerable insect pests and to improve crop yield and quality. Repeated applications of pesticides contaminate the soil and disturb the soil environment by affecting soil micro flora and various physicochemical properties of soil. In view of above problem, the present study examines the effect of different concentrations of pesticides profenofos (0.1, 1, 10 and 100 ppm) were used to show their impact on soil quality indicators like micro flora and enzyme activities of soil collected from vegetable planted field, Bhiwani (Haryana, India). Soil sample without pesticide served as control. These were withdrawn for evaluation after every seven days with a total period of 21 days. Lower concentrations (0.1 and 1.0 ppm) were found to be beneficial but higher concentrations (10 and 100 ppm) lead to reduction in bacterial counts and enzymatic activities of soil. Bacterial and actinomycetes populations were found to be reduced by 12.43 % and 16.56% with the concentration of 10 ppm and the reduction was 29.73% and 51.10% at 100 ppm concentration, respectively. Analogous trend of reduction was also observed in enzymatic activities like amylase, invertase, alkaline phosphatase and acidic phosphatase showed overall drop of 3.53%, 36.79%, 19.83% and 16.35% with the application of 10 ppm and 3.74%, 76.88%, 46.19% and 28.21% at the concentration of 100 ppm profenofos, respectively. Low concentration is beneficial for P-solubilizing bacteria but at higher concentration showed deleterious effect on the alkaline and acidic phosphatase enzyme. These results concluded that profenofos has considerably deleterious impact on soil micro flora, which may be results in harmful effect on nutrients uptake and plant growth. These research areas enhanced future research based on molecular technique, contrary to traditional approach, which are used for quantification of net impact on soil biology.

actinomycetes; bacteria; enzyme activities; profenofos

"EFFICACY OF PROFENOFOS ON MICROBIAL POPULATIONS AND ENZYMATIC ACTIVITIES IN VEGETABLE PLANTED SOIL", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no.251-262, June-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1908979.pdf

"EFFICACY OF PROFENOFOS ON MICROBIAL POPULATIONS AND ENZYMATIC ACTIVITIES IN VEGETABLE PLANTED SOIL", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no. pp251-262, June-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1908979.pdf