PREDICTIVE ECOTOXICOLOGICAL STUDY OF FUNGICIDES DERIVED FROM LUOTONIN A

Abstract

The fungus Botrytis cinerea is a pathogen that causes gray mold on greenhouse crops, affecting the quality of the products and causing the death of the plants. Control with fungicides has been limited due to the high resistance of the fungus and as a result of the continuous application of these substances, environmental impacts occur. New fungicides are therefore needed that eliminate B. cinerea but are less toxic to the ecosystem. In this sense, new antifungal compounds have been derived from luotonin A, which have shown greater efficacy against B. cinerea. This study aims to evaluate in silico the consequences of fungicides derived from luotonin A (10a, 10m, 10l, 10r, and 10s) on the ecosystem, analyzing their environmental properties, ecotoxicity, and toxicological safety. The molecules were analyzed using ECOSAR® and JANUS® software, which made it possible to analyze toxicity in aquatic organisms and persistence in water, soil, and sediment. The GUSAR© and GraphPAD Prism® tools were also used to measure toxicity in different exposure routes in rats and to compare doses between routes, using the one-way ANOVA statistical test. The results indicated that compound 10s showed low toxicity to fish and Daphnia magna in both the acute and chronic tests. In green algae, in the acute evaluation 10s showed low inhibition of biomass growth, while in the chronic test, fungicides 10l, 10r, and 10s showed low inhibitory effects. In the toxicity assessment on rats, all the compounds proved to be harmful to health when ingested. Given these results, further in silico and in vivo studies are needed to validate the data presented and assess the toxicity endpoints of the fungicides.