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Glyceria maxima as new test species for the EU risk assessment for herbicides: a microcosm study

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Abstract

In its recent guidance document on tiered risk assessment for plant protection products for aquatic organisms, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) proposed to use Glyceria maxima as monocotyledonous grass species for the testing of special herbicide groups. However, published toxicity data for this species is very limited and there is no test guideline for Glyceria sp. For this reason a microcosm study was conducted in order to gain experience on the degree of sensitivity of G. maxima to the herbicidal substances clodinafop-propargyl (grass herbicide) and fluroxypyr (auxin) in comparison to the already established test organism water milfoil Myriophyllum spicatum and the duckweed species Landoltia punctata. Five concentrations without replicates were tested for each test substance using 10 microcosms and three microcosms served as controls. The experiment was run for 8 weeks. Morphological endpoints were used to determine growth and EC50 values. The results show that M. spicatum was most sensitive to fluroxypyr (37 days EC50 for roots: 62 µg/L) and G. maxima most sensitive to clodinafop-propargyl (22 days EC50 for total shoot length: 48 µg/L) whereas the duckweed species was considerable less sensitive. Hence, G. maxima turns out to be a good candidate for testing grass specific herbicides, supporting its inclusion as an additional macrophyte test for the risk assessment of herbicides as proposed by the EFSA.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Miriam Langer, Karin Friede and the staff of the FSA for their practical support. Special thanks also to Stefan Loth and Ronny Schmiediche for their technical help. The analytical part of the department IV 2.5 is acknowledged for the chemical analysis. Jörn Wogram is thanked for his inspiring contributions to this project, and Ian Williams for the English spell check.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Umweltbundesamt, Schichauweg 58, 12307, Berlin, Germany

    S. Mohr & M. Feibicke

  2. Harnackstr. 18, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    J. Schott

  3. Umweltbundesamt, Wörlitzer Platz 1, 06844, Dessau, Germany

    L. Hoenemann

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  1. S. Mohr
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Correspondence to S. Mohr.

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Mohr, S., Schott, J., Hoenemann, L. et al. Glyceria maxima as new test species for the EU risk assessment for herbicides: a microcosm study. Ecotoxicology 24, 309–320 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-014-1379-3

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