GENEPEASE: GENomic tools for assEssment of Pesticide Effects on the Agricultural Soil Ecosystem

With the increased cost-effective accessibility to molecular techniques it has become feasible to use these techniques as tools to reveal pesticide effects before they become a hazard to natural populations. The present risk assessment of pesticides for the soil environment relies solely on classical survival or reproduction test suites and has not yet adopted any endpoints from the subindividual level of bioorganisation. As recommended by the OECD (OECD, 2004) it is now advisable to explore and implement genomic techniques in hazard and risk assessment, but yet no protocols have been drafted. Because genomic techniques inherently operate on the cell level, early indications of pesticide induced stress, exposure levels and mode-of-action needs substantiation of the link to the population level. Thus, we are now standing on the threshold to evaluate the potential of an ecotoxicogenomic approach for applied ecotoxicology. To this end our proposal will combine an established ecotoxicological evaluation of pesticides with transcriptomic techniques into a joint ecotoxicogenomic approach and underpin the decision on how to move forward in adopting these techniques.