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Over 70% of the European soils are contaminated with traces of pesticides. Our new study published in "Nature" demonstrates that pesticide residues influence soil biodiversity and negatively impact several groups of beneficial soil organisms. https://t.co/cSl02Uhu3r Statistical models revealed that pesticides were the second strongest predictor of soil biodiversity after soil properties. Earlier work demonstrated that several pesticides negatively affect aboveground organisms like bees, specific bird species and insects. This study, now extends these findings to the “underground” measuring at continental scale in Europe. It appears that pesticides are a major disturbance to the soil ecosystem and change the composition and diversity of belowground soil communities. Some microbes benefit (like the richness of bacteria) while others such as beneficial arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are suppressed and show negative relationships with pesticides. The observed negative impact of pesticides on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi confirms earlier work we did (e.g. Riedo et al. 2021, ES & T; & Edlinger et al. 2023, Nature Ecology & Evolution). It is important to stress that in our work we searched for the relationship between pesticides and soil biodiversity metrixes using statistical tools (general lineair models and variance partitioning). Thus, using this very large data-set we searched for links and associations between variables aiming to identify drivers. Further experimental studies, with direct pesticide application manipulation, ideally performed at multiple locations in Europe and ideally using sites or soils without pesticide traces need to confirm these findings. Also, this work demonstrates that risk-assessment studies and pesticide regulations need to consider whole soil ecosystems and include arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, when evaluating the effects of pesticides on the environment, rather then a few selected model species. A big accomplisment by Julia Köninger & Maeva Labouyrie in collaboration with many colleagues including Cristiano Ballabio, Olesya Dulya, Vladimir Mikryukov, Ferran Romero, Antonio Franco, Mo Bahram, Panos Panagos, Arwyn Jones, Leo Tedersoo, Alberto Orgiazzi and Maria Briones