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The residual soil material resulting from biomass thermochemical transformation during carbon separation, known as biochar, has been introduced as a soil amendment because of its numerous environmental benefits, including uses for contaminated land management. Adsorption and leaching of fomesafen in soils amended with 3 different rates of rice hull biochar (0.5%, 1%, and 2% w/w) under laboratory conditions were investigated, and studies were performed following a batch equilibration adsorption-desorption procedure and a column experiment for leaching. Adsorption-desorption data fit with the Freundlich equation well. The adsorption coefficient of fomesafen sharply increased from 0.59 to 0.99 to 8.02 to 22.23 when the amount of biochar amendment in the soil increased from 0% to 2% (w/w). In addition, a strong correlation was found between the amount of adsorbed fomesafen and the rate of amended biochar (r > 0.992, p < 0.01). Furthermore, biochar amendments reduced the desorption percentage of fomesafen in the soils. The outcomes of the leaching experiment also illustrated that the lowest fomesafen concentration in the leachate (21.4%) occurred in the soil amended with 2% (w/w) biochar. Moreover, the adsorption coefficients (K(f)(ads)) of the soil were positively correlated with the total amount of adsorbed fomesafen in the corresponding soil columns (r = 0.990, p < 0.01) and negatively correlated with the leachate percentage (r = 0.987, p < 0.05). The results of the present study suggest that biochar amendments in agricultural soils likely alter the fate of herbicides by decreasing their transport through enhanced adsorption.

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Greenhouse production of vegetables has been developed rapidly in China. High temperature and humidity inside the greenhouse make this environment more suitable for fast reproduction of fungal diseases. Fungicides are among the chemicals used extensively in the greenhouse to prevent crops from invasive infections by phytopathogens; however, little is known about the accumulation of fungicides in soil and their effect on soil quality under greenhouse conditions. In the present study, the accumulation of the fungicide chlorothalonil (CT) and its toxic metabolite hydroxy-chlorothalonil (HCT) in soil as well as their related soil genotoxicity under greenhouse conditions was investigated. The results indicated that both CT and HCT accumulated in soil with repeated applications of CT, and the accumulation level was strongly correlated to application dosage and its frequency. In addition, soil genotoxicity, which was measured by Vicia faba, also increased with the accumulation of CT and HCT, and the main contributor to this phenomenon was CT rather than HCT. The data demonstrated that successive applications of fungicides may result in their accumulation in soil and thus a decline in soil quality.

Objective Osteosarcoma (OS) is characterized by high levels of the tumour‐associated inflammatory microenvironment. Moreover, in approximately 60% of OS, telomere length is maintained by alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway. Whether the ALT pathway can be exploited for OS therapeutic treatment and how the OS inflammatory microenvironment influences the anti‐cancer drug effect remains unknown. Here, we examined the biological effects of TMPyP4 and cisplatin in the inflammatory microenvironment of OS cells. Materials and methods Immunofluorescence in situ hybridization (IF‐FISH) and C‐circle experiments were used to detect the G‐quadruplex and ALT activity. The redox potential of single guanine, G‐quadruplex and G‐quadruplex/TMPyP4 was evaluated by the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy (LUMO), zeta potential and cyclic voltammetry. Cell viability, flow cytometry and apoptosis, Western blot, comet assay, adhesion, transwell and scratch experiments were performed to compare the anti‐tumour proliferation and migration effects of TMPyP4 and cisplatin in the inflammatory microenvironment. Results This study indicated that compared with cisplatin, TMPyP4 could induce the formation of human telomeres and FAK G‐quadruplex in vitro and in vivo, and TMPyP4‐treated OS cells showed fewer extrachromosomal C‐circles and fewer ALT‐associated promyelocytic leukaemia bodies. Consequently, the ALT activity and FAK‐related cell migration were suppressed by TMPyP4. Mechanistically, the formation of G‐quadruplex resulted in both lower redox potential than G within the genome and FAK transcription inhibition, and TMPyP4 could enhance this phenomenon, especially in the inflammatory microenvironment. Conclusions Our results reveal that TMPyP4 is more suitable for OS treatment than cisplatin.