J. Env. Bio-Sci., 2014: Vol.

28 (2): 261-264 ISSN 0973-6913 (Print), ISSN 0976-3384 (On Line)

HERBICIDE USAGE AND RESIDUES IN VEGETABLE CROPS OF KANGRA DISTRICT

OF HIMACHAL PRADESH
Neelam Sharma, Suresh Kumar, Pankaj Chopra, Robin Joshi and Suman Kumari
Department of Agronomy, Forages and Grassland management.CSK HPKV, Palampur-176062
email: sharma_neelam29@rediffmail.com

Received: 14-09-2014 Accepted: 21-10-2014

A study was conducted on the use of herbicides and determination of their residues in vegetable crops of five main vegetable
growing blocks of Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh. The survey revealed that pendimethlin, alachlor, oxyfluorfen and metribuzin
were the main herbicides in use for weed control in vegetables. Residues of herbicides were estimated in collected 106 vegetable
samples by using multiresidue GC-ECD method. The recoveries for different herbicides ranged from 81.25% - 101.14%. The results
revealed that herbicide residues were present in 15% of the samples. The residues ranged from 0.01 ppm to 0.02 ppm and 0.02 to
0.06 ppm in tomato(6 Alachlor) and beans (3 Alachlor), respectively. In cucumber, onion, chillies only one sample of each was found
to be contaminated with 0.02 ppm, 0.013 ppm 0.01 ppm respectively. However in other vegetables the levels of herbicide residues
were below detectable limit.

Vegetables are important ingredient of human diet for the
maintenance of health and prevention of disease. The local
Indian meal constitutes per person about 150-250 g of vegetable
per day1. India is the second largest producer of vegetables in
the world after China. Presently, India occupies 12% of the
total area and produces 14 % of the vegetable production in
the world. In absolute terms, the country is producing about
146.55 million tonnes of vegetables from an area of around 8.5
million hectares which is about 3% of the gross cropped area
of the country2. The average productivity of vegetables is,
however, low (10-15%) if compared with the world's average
but the average yield of most of the vegetables is quite high
(70 to 80% ) of the world's average3. Vegetables like tomato,
okra, spinach, onion, beans etc. are produced in the country
for local consumptions as well as for export purposes.
Vegetables have higher productivity, short maturity cycle and
provide greater income to improve livelihood.
For better production and aesthetic value, farmers are using
a large amount of herbicides during the entire period of growth
of vegetables, even at fruiting stage and sometimes farmers
ignore recommended dose of herbicides. A huge amount of
herbicides are used on vegetables and their continual and
injudicious use becomes the reason of accumulation of
herbicide residues in the vegetables which could be consumed
by human beings directly4-5. The problem of residues
accumulation needs more attention in vegetables because most
of time these are consumed either raw or without much storage
time6. Proper use of herbicides is enforced by periodic
monitoring programme for the protection of consumers and to
evaluate the quality of food especially vegetable crops.
Therefore, present research work was undertaken with an
objective to survey herbicide usage and their concentration in
vegetables of Kangra district of H.P.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Survey and sample collection: Five major vegetable
producing blocks of Kangra district viz. Indora, Bhawarna,
Baijnath, Panchrukhi and Bhedu Mahadev were selected and
surveyed through PRA technique in each block. Collective
information on some aspects like land use pattern and
pesticide use etc. and individual information for their name,
total land, total vegetable land, number of vegetable crops
growing, pesticide used etc. was collected in survey schedules.
A total of 106 different vegetable samples (1-2kg each) were
collected from direct farmer's field and stored at -100C for further
analysis. Frozen samples were manually cut into ~0.5cm
pieces immediately before analysis.
Chemicals and standards: Analytical grade standards of
metribuzin, pendimethalin, oxyfluorfen and alachlor of known
purity were procured from alpha-Accer and Sigma Aldrich.
Stock solution of individual pesticide was prepared by dissolving
accurately weighted analytical grade material in acetone.
Standard mixture of pesticides 10 ppm of each was prepared
by mixing individual stock solutions.
 Herbicide Usage and Residues in Vegetable Crops
Estimation of herbicide residues in collected samples : A
multiresidue GC method was developed for commonly used
herbicides metribuzin, pendimethalin, oxyfluorfen and alachlor
in vegetables crops. The prepared samples were analyzed by
Perkin Elmer GC Model Clarus 500 equipped with 63Ni Electron
Captured Detector (ECD) and split-splitless injector. A GC
column RTx-5 (30m x 0.25µm film thickness) was used for
analysis. Nitrogen was used as a carrier gas with flow rate
25ml/min. Oven temperature was start from 1200C with 1 min
hold and increased at 1800C with rate of 200C/min. Final oven
temperature was 2800C with rate of 50C for 10 min hold. The
injector and detector were 2400C and 3500C, respectively.
Extraction method: Each vegetable sample (20g) was
chopped and ground to form paste. Acetonitrile (HPLC grade)
(50ml) was added in sample and put on shaker (Remi India
Pvt. Ltd.) for 3 hr. Samples were filtered and extraction process
was repeated twice (2x50ml acetonitrile,each). The collected
filtrate was transferred to a separating funnel followed by
addition of 25ml saturated solution of sodium chloride and
125ml distilled water. The above solution was partitioned with
petroleum ether (50ml,each) thrice. Aqueous layer was
discarded. Collected organic layer washed thrice with distilled
water (50ml,each). Passed the organic layer over Na2SO4 bed
and was evaporated on rotor vapour. Residues were dissolved
in hexane and final volume made up to 5ml and injected into
GC.
Recovery : Recovery studies were also carried out in order to
establish the reliability of the analytical methods and also to
know the efficiency of extraction in the present study. Vegetable
samples were fortified with 0.5 µg/g and1.0 µg/g with known
quantity of standard solution of mixture of herbicides to get
desired fortification level. The samples were extracted by
following procedure given in proceeding section.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The present study was undertaken to determine herbicide use
and the concentration of different herbicide residues in
vegetables of five blocks of Kangra district of H.P. Among
different vegetables, beans, tomato, cucumber, capsicum, okra,
chillies, brinjal, cauliflower, cabbage, garlic, onion and turnip
were in common which were grown in all the studied five blocks.
Potato and peas were the additional crops which were under
cultivation only in Bhawana block and spinach in Indora block.
(262)
Alachlor was the main herbicide, among different (oxyfluorfen,
pendimethlin, alachlor, metribuzin) herbicides used by the
farmers to control different weeds of vegetable crops in all the
selected blocks of Kangra District except in Punchrukhi block.
The farmers of Bhawarna block and Indora blocks were in
practice of using oxyfluorfen, pendimethlin, alachlor and
metribuzin in their vegetable crops (Table-1).
A total of 38 farmers were selected for collection of vegetables
in these five blocks of Kangra for residue studies. Total 106
samples including 10 samples from local market were
collected. The maximum vegetable samples (32) were
collected from Bhawarna block followed by Panchrukhi (18).
15 Samples and 13 samples were collected from block Baijnath
and BheduMahadev blocks, respectively. Whereas only 12
vegetable samples were collected from Indora block. Among
samples of different vegetables collected, the maximum
sample number (36) was for tomato crop followed by beans
(18 samples), cucumber (15 samples), chillies (10 samples),
okra (8 samples), brinjal (7 samples), onion (4 samples) and
potato, capsicum, spinach and cucurbits (2 each samples).
Among 10 samples collected from the local market, 4 samples
for tomato, 1 samples each for cucumber, beans and okra and
one each for rest all the vegetables except radish and spinach
were included in the residue studies.
A method was developed for determination of herbicides
alachlor, oxyfluorfen, metribuzin and pendimethlin commonly
used in vegetables. The retention time of metribuzin was 16.08
minute, pendimethlin 16.35 minute, alachlor 17.33 minute and
oxyfluorfen was 19.39 minutes as shown in Table-2. Good
sensitivity and selectivity of method were obtained with limits
of quantification 0.01 mg/kg in almost all cases. The efficiency
and reproducibility of the analytical procedure was tested with
vegetables spiked with four different herbicides. The average
recoveries were 81.25% for metribuzin, 88.2% for pendimethlin,
101.14 % for alachlor and 90.62% for oxyfluorfen respectively.
The data on presence of herbicide residues blockwise is
tabulated in Table-3.The results indicated that 15% of total
analyased 106 samples were found contaminated . The
residues of various herbicides in five different blocks of Kangra
district of H.P. including local market showed that the vegetable
samples collected from local market were most contaminated
i.e. out of 16 samples collected from local market, 4 were
found to be contaminated with herbicide residues, although
the residue level were generally below the prescribed MRLs..
(263) Sharma, Kumar, Chopra, Joshi and Kumari

Table-1. Commonly used herbicides in different blocks of Kangra district

Table-2. Retention time and average % recovery of different herbicides used in the multiresidue
method

Table-3. Variation of herbicide residues in different blocks of Kangra district of H.P.

Table-4. Variation of herbicide residues in vegetable samples of Kangra District

 Herbicide Usage and Residues in Vegetable Crops
The data showed that maximum samples of vegetables
collected from local market 25% were found to be contaminated
with different herbicides followed by Punchrukhi block 22.2%
and Baijnath block 20%. The data on herbicide residues in
different vegetables are given in Table-4. Maximum samples
i.e.36 of tomato were analyzed and out of which 6 samples
were contaminated with alachlor residues and 3 samples were
contaminated with metribuzin residues in range from 0.01 to
0.02 ppm and 0.007 to 0.02 ppm respectively. Total eighteen
samples of beans were analyzed out of which five bean sample
were found to be contaminated with alachlor(3) and
metribuzin(2) samples in range 0.02 to 0.06 ppm and 0.007 to
0.01 ppm respectively. In cucumber and onion, only one sample
of each was found to be contaminated with 0.02 ppm alachlor
and 0.013ppm alachlor respectively. However in potato, radish,
okra, brinjal capsicum, spinach and cucurbits residues of
herbicide were below detectable levels.
Gas Chromatography is most versatile and sensitive technique
used for residue analysis due to high sensitivity obtained with
ECD and the multiresidue GC method developed was used for
estimation of residues in vegetable crops. The optimum
conditions were met to extract and determined alachlor,
metribuzin, pendimethlin, oxyfluorfen herbicides in 106
vegetable samples in less time. The detected amount of the
mentioned herbicides i.e. alachlor, metribuzin, pendimethlin,
oxyfluorfen in collected important vegetables is indicative of
necessity to continue the herbicide residue monitoring
programme.
(264)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Authors acknowledge the financial support provided by UGC
New Delhi to undertake this work.
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