During the last two decades concerns have been raised by environmentalists, scientists and medical practitioners all over the world about the relatively unknown impact of synthetic pesticides on the environment and more importantly on human health. Jamaica, and by extension the Caribbean, are largely agricultural territories in which pesticide use is quite extensive. Particularly, herbicides like glyphosate, methomyl and 2,4-D are of primary interest, since the importation of these pesticides, particularly glyphosate for agricultural sectors is extremely high. Hence, it is quite probable that these herbicides contaminate the natural water resources.
Glyphosate is a broad spectrum, non-selective, post-emergence herbicide, synthesized as the N-(phosphonomethyl) derivative of the amino acid glycine. A global herbicide, glyphosate is used extensively in the farming of cereal, potatoes, vines, mushrooms, cotton, maize and soy. In Jamaica it is very widely used in agriculture, having been approved for use in the cultivation of banana, beans, citrus, cocoa, coffee, guava, melon, okra, onion (dry bulb), papaya, pea, peanut, pineapple, potato and sugarcane. Glyphosate is also widely used in forest management and urban landscape management. It is the active ingredient in several herbicide formulations of which Roundup is possibly the most popular.
The aim of our studies is to understand the persistence, behaviour and effects of glyphosate in tropical environments. Significant scientific data of this sort is available for temperate regions of the world, but no scientific data on the fate of these pesticides are available for tropical ecosystem.
