Herbicides represent the most extensively utilized category of pesticides globally and are designed to damage or eliminate undesirable plant species in agricultural settings due to their competition with economically significant crops (Pathak et al., 2022). Consequently, herbicides play a crucial role in sustaining productivity within conventional agricultural practices (Tudi et al., 2021). Despite their significant utility, the application of these chemicals is associated with numerous environmental challenges, particularly concerning their effects on non-target species, as the chemical compounds are inherently non-specific (Singh and Singh, 2016). Non-target species adversely affected by herbicides encompass a range of organisms, including other plant species (Carpenter et al., 2020), insects (Ejomah et al., 2020), fish (Delcorso et al., 2020), humans (Torres-Badia et al., 2022), and microorganisms (Thiour-Mauprivez et al., 2019), leading to the decline of sensitive taxa (Paul et al., 2019). This latter impact is ecologically significant, as the loss of microbial taxa may result in the disruption of biogeochemical processes facilitated by these organisms in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems (Mattoo and Suman, 2023). The primary source of this issue is the direct application of herbicides to crops (Dhuldhaj et al., 2023). However, this practice generates additional sources of contamination, particularly through the disposal of empty pesticide packaging (Lwin and Lwin, 2023). To mitigate the potential impacts associated with the improper disposal of such packaging, governments have established standards for the recovery and recycling of pesticide containers (Eras et al., 2017). These standards include the triple washing of containers, the return of the empty packaging to the manufacturer by users, and the storage of water used for washing containers in designated tanks to prevent its release into the environment (Mello and Scapini, 2016).

Water storage tanks employed for the washing of pesticide packaging function as restrictive environments for microbial development due to the presence of various toxic compounds and limited nutrient availability for organisms that do not utilize pesticides as a nutrient source. These conditions impose selective pressure on the diversity of the microbial community, resulting in the elimination of sensitive phenotypes while favoring the survival of adapted phenotypes (Paul et al., 2019). Moreover, the significant level of water contamination, combined with the necessity for transportation to appropriate facilities for the disposal of environmental liabilities, necessitates a reduction in water volume through evaporation (at 100 °C for 190 min) to mitigate freight costs (Lima et al., 2020). This warming process is considered a genetic drift event, leading to the loss of random microbial populations and their genetic compositions. Consequently, there is a correlation between genetic drift and selection events, resulting in a less diverse microbial community that possesses response mechanisms adapted to withstand these chemically stressful conditions (Fig. 1). Several of these adaptive phenotypes are of significant interest for bioprospecting in biotechnological applications (Lima et al., 2020). Consequently, storage tanks containing water utilized for rinsing pesticide packaging represent a critical environment for the selection of microorganisms that may be employed in biotechnological applications.

This review employs the aforementioned tanks as a model to systematically analyze the impacts and response systems of microorganisms to survive pesticides and their potential biotechnological applications. Based on this model, the review aims to broaden the application of these concepts to other pesticide-contaminated environments, whether aquatic or terrestrial. Thus, these environments can be hotspots for the selection and bioprospecting of microorganisms with response systems relevant to biotechnology. These microorganisms, coupled with enhanced molecular knowledge may enable the development of strategies to address broader environmental and clinical challenges.