concentrations of herbicide treatments resulted in much
lower microbial counts when compared to soils treated
with recommended doses. This study agrees with the
above statement because the recommended
concentrations resulted in much lower bacterial counts
when compared with soils treated with half the
recommended doses. The high bacterial counts observed
in soil treatments at week two could be due to the fact
that the soil microflora are able to temporarily mineralize
and use the herbicides as energy sources. However, this
was followed by a general decline in microbial counts.
Taiwo and Oso (1997) have also suggested that this
decline in microbial counts must have been due to the
fact that microbial populations that were tolerant of
treated pesticides (herbicides) were susceptible to theproducts of soil-pesticides (herbicides) interactions, which
could have possibly been bactericidal. Also, Cloete et al.
(2006) also stated that system under stress usually cause
species diversity to decrease and may result in an
increase in numbers of the species capable of tolerating
stress. This supports the decline in week 4 (Figure 1)