Why do we need to be concerned about the toxicity of pesticides to soil microorganisms? | Pourquoi faut-il se préoccuper de la toxicité des pesticides pour les micro-organismes du sol?

Micro-organisms play a key role in fulfilling ecosystem functions of soils (such as nutrient cycling, soil structuring, crop growth promotion and protection, and degradation and detoxification of organic pollutants and inorganic pesticides), hence it is important to preserve their taxonomic and functional diversity. There is now an urgent need to better assess the ecotoxicity of pesticides on these micro-organisms through the application of sophisticated experimental methods and protocols in a new regulatory framework, which are discussed in this paper