Impact of different agricultural practices on soil genotoxicity

The presence of genotoxic chemicals in soil can nega-tively affect crop yield and human health. In this study Tri-folium repens was used as bioindicator to assess the impact of three different agriculture practices on soil genotoxicity. Three separate sites representative of the three different agricultural management systems were selected in the Pavia Province, Italy. Two biomonitoring experiments were per-formed during autumn 2004, after plant harvest and dur-ing summer 2005, just after soil preparation. Soil genotox-icity was evaluated with AFLP molecular markers. Results showed that all the three soils induced DNA damage in the indicator-plants. Nevertheless, on the base of the pre-sent findings, biodinamic agricultural management system seems the best farming approach to maintain soil quality with regard to genotoxicity.