Earthworms as a Bio Indicator for Assessing Soil Toxicity: A Review on Impact in Agriculture

This review article is an attempt to study the impact of toxicity in the realm of insecticides and pesticides which is very dangerous to target (earthworm) and non-target (other than earthworm) organisms and lower LC50 leads to death of earthworms which is important for nutrients rotation, that’s why overall productivity of agriculture crops may go down. Various pesticides directly or indirectly pollute air, water, soil, and the overall ecosystem, which causes serious health hazards to living beings. We have discussed in this review article about understanding of different kinds of toxicity levels and their impact on targeted invertebrates. The author also discussed tools to assess heavy metal toxicity as a biomarker e.g. total protein assay, metallothionein (MT), catalase and lipoxygenase (LOX), and glutathione (GSH) assay. Other alternatives to control crop loss due to pest attacks may include the application of various biopesticides. Another way of avoiding pesticide use includes developing some crop varieties that are resistant to some pests through the use of transgenic approaches.