Some Pesticides Can Slip Under Natural Protection Into Streams, Researchers Find

Feb 26, 2026

By Jeff Mulhollem

Pesticides can harm aquatic ecosystems and human health, so scientists need to understand how they move from farm fields into streams. A management tool commonly implemented is riparian buffers — strips of vegetation, like shrubs or grasses, bordering streams — that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) advises can reduce the amount of nutrients, sediment and pesticides getting into waterways. But it’s unclear how effective buffers actually are at stopping pesticides from entering streams, according to a multidisciplinary team led by Penn State researchers. To find out, the researchers conducted a study on a small agricultural stream, finding that adding buffers likely reduces the amount of specific pesticides from reaching the stream, but not others.

The researchers, who published their findings today (Feb. 24) in the Journal of Environmental Quality , focused on Halfmoon Creek and its 24-square-mile watershed in central Pennsylvania characterized by a karst landscape — an area underlain by soluble bedrock with lots of cracks, sinkholes and underground water flow.

Source : psu.edu

Video: What’s at Stake in Every Slice | On The Brink: Episode 7

Six hundred Canadian farms grow grain for Warburton's under custom contract — and that partnership exists because of Canadian plant breeding. Now the man responsible for maintaining it is sounding the alarm.

Adam Dyck is the program manager for Warburton's Canada, a company that produces over two million loaves of bread a day for more than 20,000 retail locations across the UK. He's watched Canadian wheat deliver thirty years of yield gains and quality advancements that make it worth sourcing at scale — and shipping across the Atlantic. But he's also watching the investment conditions that produced those gains come under pressure. Dyck makes the case for a new funding mechanism that brings both public and private dollars into wheat breeding before Canada's competitive window starts to close.