Comparative aspects of herbicide metabolism

Herbicides are the economically most important group of pesticides, and such activity occurs in a wide range of chemical structural classes. Studies of the metabolism of herbicides involve a great number of organisms and test systems to provide information of value for assessing the nature of potential residues in human foods of plant and animal origin, metabolism-toxicity relationships in mammals in view of potential human exposure, and in plants in view of biological selectivity, and the environmental fate in soil and aquatic systems. Some of the objectives pursued in an industrial metabolism laboratory and the problems confronted when elaborating its contribution to the safety assessment of a pesticide are briefly described with special reference to metabolism-selectivity relationships in plants and the significance of plant metabolites to animals.