Environmental behavior of paclobutrazol in soil and its toxicity on potato and taro plants

The environmental behavior of paclobutrazol in soil and its toxicity were studied by field investigation and an outdoor pot experiment, and the residue of paclobutrazol was detected by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Field investigation has found that the residual paclobutrazol in the former succession crop could severely inhibit the growth of succeeding crops of potato; with migration and transformation of residual paclobutrazol in the soil, the stems of potato were thickened with residual amount of 1.23 mg kg−1, the growth was slow, and the height of potato in soil with residual amount of 1.34 mg kg−1 and the control was significantly different. The degradation dynamics of paclobutrazol fits with the first-order degradation kinetics, although T1/2 of paclobutrazol of the taro planting soil was 30.14–46.21 days and the residual paclobutrazol remained detectable even on day 120 after application. Taro leaves were sensitive to the stress of paclobutrazol pollution; the taro leaf thickness increased, the leaf area decreased, the chlorophyll content per area unit of taro leaf showed an obvious increased trend, and SOD and CAT activities and MDA and proline content increased significantly. Paclobutrazol promoted the tillering of taro, and the taro seedlings were dwarfed by 58.01, 63.27, and 75.88% at different concentrations. It indicated that taro had strong stress response ability under paclobutrazol pollution.