Environmental performance of phytosanitary control techniques on soybean crop estimated by life cycle assessment (LCA)

Phytosanitary control is essential to ensure agricultural productivity and quality. However, approaches based on scheduled use of pesticides, overuse of harmful molecules produce impacts on different types of living organisms. Integrated Pest and Disease Management (IPM-IDM) may significantly reduce the burden of pesticides in the environment. Plant resistance may also be included in the IPM-IDM and even in conventional management due to little requirement of additional knowledge and changes in agricultural practices. Robust environmental assessments using methodology of universal use, life cycle assessment (LCA), may estimate the impacts of specific pesticides that cause major damages, including remarkable category impacts. Therefore the objective of this study was to determine the impacts and (eco)toxicological effects of phytosanitary strategies (IPM-IDM including or not lepidopteran resistant transgenic cultivars) vs. the scheduled approach. Two inventory modeling methods were also applied to gather information on the use and applicability of these methods. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied using two inventory modeling methods: 100%Soil and PestLCI (Consensus) using data from Brazilian croplands under tropical conditions, by combining phytosanitary approaches (IPM-IDM, IPM-IDM + transgenic cultivar, conventional, conventional + transgenic cultivar) and modeling methods. Hence, eight soybean production scenarios were established. The IPM-IDM was efficient to reduce the (eco)toxicity impacts of soybean production mainly for freshwater ecotoxicity category. Due to the dynamic character of IPM-IDM approaches, the inclusion of recently introduced strategies (plant resistant and biological control to stink bugs and plant fungal diseases) may diminish even more the principal impacting substances throughout the Brazilian croplands. The PestLCI Consensus method, although its development is yet in progress, to date can be suggested to estimate the agriculture environmental impacts more properly under tropical conditions.