A model of organic chemical uptake by plants from soil and the atmosphere.

A three-compartment mass balance model of a plant is developed to quantify the uptake of organic chemicals from soil and the atmosphere. The compartments are as follows: root, stem, and foliage. The processes involved are diffusion and bulk flow of chemical between soil and root; transport within the plant in the phloem and transpiration streams between root, stem, and foliage; exchange between foliage and air and between soil and air, metabolism and growth. The model is applied to the uptake of Bromacil by the soybean from hydroponic solution, yielding results which compare favorably with experimental data