ARISTO

In ARISTO (the European Industry - Academia Network for RevIsing and Advancing the Assessment of the Soil Microbial TOxicity of Pesticides), leading universities and industrial partners join forces to perform a cutting edge research and doctorate training programme tackling the global challenge of minimising the environmental off-target effects of pesticides.
The multi-sectoral approach of ARISTO, interlinking disciplines from soil microbiology, microbial ecology, environmental chemistry and risk assessment, will generate the new generation of Microbial Ecotoxicologists specialized in pesticides-soil microbes interactions. The research challenge of ARISTO is to produce benchmarking knowledge supporting the development of advanced tools and procedures, based on the response of key microbial indicator groups like ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms (AOM) and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), for the comprehensive assessment of the toxicity of pesticides on soil microorganisms. ARISTO offers doctorate fellows a challenging training programme build along 5 research objectives:
(1) to develop pioneering in vitro tests, as a first conservative step, to assess the toxicity of pesticides on distinct AOM (ESR1) and AMF (ESR2) strains
(2) to develop advanced experimental lab and field tests to assess the toxicity of pesticides on natural soil assemblages of AOM (ESR3) and AMF (ESR4), as a more realistic toxicity assessment step
(3) to develop an ecosystem-level toxicity assessment: identify the response of soil microbial networks to pesticides (ESR5) and explore the impact of pesticides on microorganisms from different trophic-levels within the soil food-web (predator - prey) (ESR6)
(4) to develop novel tools and procedures to determine the soil microbial toxicity of pesticide mixtures (ESR7) and biopesticides (ESR8)
(5) to develop & validate advanced in silico tools for prioritizing transformation products (TPs) of pesticides with potential toxicity to soil microbes (ESR9)