In agriculture, the use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) as active substances in pesticides has increased over recent decades due to their chemical stability, their ability to alter cell membrane permeability, and their capacity to bind to target proteins. However, their intentional application to agricultural soils has led to progressive environmental accumulation. Their high persistence, mobility, and bioaccumulation potential, combined with documented toxicological effects, raise concerns for aquatic organisms and ecosystems. Monitoring surface and groundwater is essential to assess PFAS contamination. Data from the Italian monitoring plan show widespread contamination, despite the existing European regulatory framework designed to safeguard ecosystems and public health. The contamination is likely underestimated because monitoring programs currently target only a limited number of substances and PFAS metabolites and co-formulants are not included. Approximately 46 PFASs have been identified as active ingredients in pesticides, 29 of which are still authorized within the European Union, posing challenges for drinking water production and ecosystem protection. Existing regulatory regimes also differ in their evaluation procedures, which may lead to inconsistent conclusions regarding PFAS applications. Within the framework of the European “One Substance One Assessment” (OSOA) approach aimed at to ensuring the protection of human health and natural resources, this paper examines the properties of PFASs used as active substances in pesticides, their regulatory status, and their monitoring in Italy, highlighting the regulatory inconsistencies that result in the differential treatment of these substances compared with PFASs used in other sectors.

The progress in chemical analytics and understanding of pesticide dynamics in surface waters allows establishing robust data on compounds with frequent exceedances of quality standards. The current chemical, temporal, and spatial coverage of the pesticide monitoring campaigns differs strongly between European countries. A questionnaire revealed differences in monitoring strategies in seven selected European countries; Nordic countries prioritize temporal coverage, while others focus on spatial coverage. Chemical coverage has increased, especially for non-polar classes like synthetic pyrethroids. Sweden combines monitoring data with agricultural practices for derived quantities, while the Netherlands emphasizes spatial coverage to trace contamination sources. None of the EU member states currently has established a process for linking chemical surface water monitoring data with regulatory risk assessment, while Switzerland has recently established a legally defined feedback loop. Due to their design and objectives, most strategies do not capture concentration peaks, especially 2-week composite samples, but also grab samples. Nevertheless, for substances that appear problematic in many data sets, the need for action is evident even without harmonization of monitoring programs. Harmonization would be beneficial, however, for cross-national assessment including risk reduction measures.

Aquatic organisms are exposed to ever-changing complex mixtures of chemicals throughout their lifetime. Component-Based Mixture Risk Assessment (CBMRA) is a well-established methodology for water contaminant-mixture management, the use of which is growing due to improved access to reference ecotoxicity data and extensive monitoring datasets. It enables the translation of measured exposure concentrations of chemicals into biological effect values, and thus to quantitatively estimate the risk of the whole water sample (i.e., as a mixture). However, many factors can bias the final risk decision by impacting the risk metric components; thus, a careful design of the CBMRA is needed, taking into primary consideration the specific features of the dataset and mixture risk assessment assignments. This study systematically addressed the effects of the most common approaches used for handling the concentrations of chemicals below the limit of detection/quantification (LOD/LOQ) in CBMRA. The main results included: i) an informed CBMRA procedure that enables the tracking of the risk decisions triggered by substances below LOD/LOQ, ii) a conceptual map and guidance criteria to support the selection of the most suitable approach for specific scenarios and related interpretation; iii) a guided implementation of the informed CBMRA on dataset of pesticide concentrations in Italian rivers in 2020 (702,097 records).

The asparagine synthetase A (EC 6.3.1.1) of E. coli (AS-A) mainly uses ammonia to produce asparagine, a key nitrogen transporter in plants. The AS-A encoding gene ( asnA ) was expressed constitutively in lettuce cultivar ‘Cortina’ under the control of pMAC , a chimerical promoter, to induce phenotypical alterations of plant growth and quality as a consequence of nitrogen status changes. Nine fertile transgenic lines harbouring independent T-DNA insertions were recovered. Primary transformants shared new visible traits such as a higher leaf number and wider leaf surface than the wild-type. The progeny of three primary transformants stably maintained these phenotypes, to which the synthesis of both asnA transcript and protein were associated. In pMAC:asnA plants, seed germination, formation and development of leaves, bolting and flowering occurred earlier than non-transformed plants. Twenty-eight days after sowing (das), transgenic plants showed a ca. 1.3 increase of leaf area and dry weight as compared to the wild-type. Moreover, the contents of asparagine, aspartic acid and glutamine, but not that of glutamic acid, of pMAC:asnA young plants (21 das) were greater than the wild-type. The level of total soluble protein was higher in transgenic than in non-transformed leaves borne on plants at 35, 50 and 75 das. A decrease of nitrate was also measured in pMAC:asnA leaves with respect to non-transformed ‘Cortina’, in transgenic populations at 60 das. In pMAC:asnA genotypes, the altered content of nitrogen transport amino acids, the tolerance to increasing doses of ammonium and phosphinothricin indirectly proved the AS-A enzymatic activity in lettuce.

Up to now research centres and companies have developed their scientific disciplines and technologies within disparate sectors. Today, the trend is to combine these individual disciplines to meet a common goal. Converging technology represents the application and integration of complementary disciplines towards new fields. The technologies applied in various scientific fields often overlap; however, their union can result in much more than the sum of the single component, leading to unexpected and novel solutions.

Photosynthetic microorganisms are expected to be useful to maintain an oxygenic atmosphere and to provide biomass for astronauts in the International Space Station as well as in future long-term space flights. However, fluxes of complex ionizing radiation of various intensities and energies make space an extreme environment for the microorganisms, affecting their photosynthetic efficiency. To automatically monitor the photosynthetic Photosystem II (PSII) activity of microorganisms under space conditions an optical biosensor, which utilizes chlorophyll fluorescence as biological transduction system, was built; the PSII activity was monitored by the biosensor during balloon flights at stratospheric altitudes of about 40 km. The effect of space stress on quantum yield of PSII varied among the tested species depending on the growth light conditions at which they were exposed during the flights.