Risk analysis of pesticides applied to rice paddies using RICEWQ 1.6.2v and RIVWQ 2.02

Rice is commonly cultivated in Southern Europe in large river basins where the extensive use of herbicides may impact water quality at basin scale level. Consequently, pesticide risk assessment would be more relevant when considering a rice cultivation area as a whole. Accordingly, two watershed-scale scenarios were developed to represent the specific agronomic, water and pesticide management practices of rice cultivation in Greece. These scenarios were utilized for the parameterization of the rice water quality model (RICEWQ) 1.6.2v and the surface water model river water quality (RIVWQ) 2.02. in order to predict the environmental concentrations of pesticides in groundwater (GW) and surface water (SW) systems within a rice area. The annual average pesticide concentrations at 1 m depth, predicted by RICEWQ were used to assess the risk for GW contamination. The predicted exposure concentrations derived through modelling and eco-toxicological endpoints obtained from the literature, were used to calculate acute and long-term toxicity exposure ratios (TERs) for aquatic organisms. Application of these scenarios with RICEWQ and RIVWQ models enabled us to perform a risk assessment exercise for several herbicides registered in Greece for use in rice. Such a risk assessment approach could be further scaled up to represent a whole rice cultivated basin in order to be used for regulatory purposes.