20 to 80 % of the chemicals applied in agriculture are sorbed, fixed, encapsulated or bound in the soil so they are not anymore analytically detectable. This book covers the results of a workshop initiated by the Senate Commission for the Assessment of Chemicals used in Agriculture of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It discusses the state of the art and outlines future research priorities. The topics presented range from methods of determining the nature of the bond, new extraction methods and their role in humic chemistry in general, stimulation of formation of bound residues and their practical relevance, the role of dissolved organic matter on turnover and translocation, bioavailability and uptake of bound residues by plants and soil organisms to ecotoxicological assessment of bound residues in soil/plant system. The results finally lead to a modification of the definition of bound residues.
