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Abstract
Rapid industrialization, technological advancements and successful green revolution in both developed and developing countries have resulted in the introduction of a variety of toxic chemicals into the environment. Man-made toxic chemicals are released into the environment during production, transportation as well as utilization, and thus pose a threat to living biota. Insecticidal products containing pyrethroids have been widely used to control insect pests in agriculture, public health, homes and gardens. Pesticides affect not only the physiology and survival of aquatic organisms including fish but also can interact with their genetic material which may lead to the mutations or carcinogenesis. Genotoxicity not only reduces the ‘fitness’ (i.e. growth, fertility and fecundity) in wild fish populations, but also pose risk to human health via food chain. Hence, the present investigation has been made to detect the nuclear abnormalities (NA) in erythrocytes of fish, Etroplussuratensis under the influence of lambda (λ) -cyhalothrin. The blood samples obtained from control and different sub-lethal concentrations of lambda-cyhalothrin treated fishes at 24hrs, 48hrs, 72hrs and 96 hrs of exposure. From this investigation, different doses of pyrethroid insecticide lambda-cyhalothrin induced nuclear abnormalities (binucleated, lobed and notched nuclei) in E.suratensis after different exposure period. In the present study various nuclear abnormalities (binuclei, lobed and notched nuclei) were identified and it revealed that such identified abnormalities may be indicators of genotoxicity.