The objective of this work was to develop techniques to reduce, in soil, the persistence of herbicides used in pastures, to implement crop-breeding system integration and subsequent crops. Thus, experiments were performed under greenhouse and field conditions. The first one under field conditions (degraded pasture), aimed to evaluate the tolerance of maize and sorghum crops to herbicides (picloram + 2,4-D) and 2,4-D, applied at commercial recommended rates. The second experiment conducted under greenhouse conditions aimed to evaluate the residual effect of these herbicides under different area management conditions. Nine treatments were assessed, with the main plots being composed by the crops (without soil cultivation, grown with corn and grown with sorghum) and by the subplots, management (weeds controlled by manual cultivation, with 2,4-D, or with a mixture picloram + 2,4-D). The field experiment was installed in Viçosa-MG in hot and humid season in a completely randomized block design, with four replications. The soil was a Red-Yellow Ultisol with median fertility. For the implementation of the second experiment under greenhouse conditions, soil samples collected in all subplots of the first experiment were used at 1, 42, 125 and 170 days after application (DAA) of herbicides. In this study, the persistence of the herbicides in the soil at each treatment was evaluated to identify soil remediation ability by maize and sorghum, compared with bare soil. It was found that corn plant growth was affected by the herbicides and accumulated lesser amount of dry mass when the corn plants were grown in soil with residues of picloram + 2,4-D mixture, while sorghum was tolerant. The residual effect of the herbicides in the soil evaluated was not influenced by the crop species or soil management (corn, sorghum or bare soil). There was not any sign of poisoning in the indicative plants grown in soil samples collected in the areas treated with 2,4-D in the evaluation conducted 42 DAA. However, plants grown in soil samples that received the mixture picloram + 2,4-D, showed no intoxication symptoms only after 150 DAA.
phytoremediation; picloram; 2,4-D; successive crops
