Pesticide assessment of the banana sector in an Ecuadorian watershed.

A survey was conducted in several Ecuadorian banana plantations to determine the actual pesticide management and their environmental impacts. It was detected that glyphosate, propiconazole, imazalil, tridemorph and imazalil are the pesticides most used in the Ecuadorian banana sector. As a first step, two screening models (EQC and EXAMS) were used to determine the overall distribution of these pesticides in a unitary environment. Whereas EQC evaluates soil, water, sediment and air compartments, EXAMS only takes into account water and sediment compartments. Although both models show different results due to their different approaches, a comparison can still be done considering only the aquatic portion of the unitary environment. For the case study presented here, all 5 pesticides tend to affect more the soil and water compartment.