Multiscale analysis reveals key factors governing pesticide residue in staple crop kernels

Identifying the types of pesticides that accumulated in kernels and the key factors governing their accumulation is crucial for agroproduct determining the quality and safety of agroproducts. Current studies rely on laboratory experiments to simulate pesticide migration; however, the inherent complexity of natural environments causes significant discrepancies with fieldmeasured data. To address this, this study integrated field surveys and in silico simulation methods. The results not only confirmed that crop transporter proteins are the core factor driving the aforementioned discrepancies but also revealed that the coupled effect of pesticide physicochemical properties and environmental/climatic conditions significantly affects the occurrence of pesticides with low octanol/water partition coefficients (K_ow) and high water solubilities (S_w) in natural environments. This further altered the crop root concentration factor (RCF) and translocation factor (TF) values, leading to marked differences from the hydroponic results with the maximum deviation reaching 40 times. In conclusion, the results of this study demonstrated that the synergistic effects of pesticide physicochemical properties (contribution rate: 60.38 %), environmental variables (22.98 %), plant biological characteristics (14.7 %), and climatic conditions (1.94 %) collectively governed the migration and accumulation of 58 currentuse pesticides along the soil-root-kernel (with a detection rate of less than 1/3) pathway, providing a new perspective for the precise control of pesticide contamination in agroproducts.