Dissipation of Atrazine Residues in North Dakota Soils

At the time of this writing, Atrazine was an excellent herbicide for season long weed control in corn. One of the main problems confronting farmers who apply atrazine, was it's long soil residual which occasionally damages crops that follow atrazine treated corn the next year in a rotation. Due to it's residues varying from year to year, an understanding of the method of dissipation (breakdown and/or movement out of soil) would help farmers to predict approximately the amount of residue for the following year. This article presents a study conducted to help determine the dissipation of atrazine from various soils in North Dakota. Under North Dakota conditions, leaching is not important in the removal of atrazine residues from the upper root zone of the soil. Fallow soils dissipate atrazine more rapidly than soils growing corn