Reprotoxicidade de formulação à base de glifosato em caenorhabditis elegans não se deve apenas ao ingrediente ativo

Abstract

Pesticides guarantee high productivity in agriculture, but the long-term costs have proved too high. Acute and chronic intoxication of humans and animals, contamination of soil, water and food are the consequences of the current demand and sales of these products. Commercial successes, with high global sales, like glyphosate illustrate this scenario. In addition, pesticides such as glyphosate are sold in commercial formulations which have inert ingredients, substances with unknown composition and proportion. Faced with this scenario, toxicological studies that investigate the composition and interaction between the active principle and the inerts are necessary. The following work proposed comparative toxicology studies between glyphosate and its commercial formulation using the alternative model Caenorhabditis elegans. Worms were first exposed in liquid medium for 30 minutes at different concentrations of the active ingredient (glyphosate in monoisopropylamine salt) and its commercial formulation. At the end of this period, worms were transferred to a solid medium, where exposure continued for another 48 hours. Reproductive capacity was evaluated through brood size, morphological analysis of oocytes and through the MD701 strain (bcIs39), which allows the visualization of germ cells in apoptosis. In addition, the metal composition in the commercial formulation was also analyzed by ICP-MS. Only the commercial formulation of glyphosate showed significant negative effects on brood size, body length, oocyte size, and the number of apoptotic cells. Metal analysis showed the presence of Hg, Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn, As, Cd and Pb in the commercial formulation. Taken together, these results bring light to the unknown, which is the metal composition of commercial pesticide formulations. Finally, we demonstrated within the C. elegans model that the addition of inert ingredients increased the toxic profile of the active ingredient glyphosate.