In Silico Assessment of Ethephon Risks in Off-Season Tomato Production in Baghan Village, Iran

This study proposes an integrated computational framework to assess the environmental fate and human health risks of ethephon in off-season tomato production in Baghan village, Iran. The framework represents the soil-plant-food-human exposure pathway under semi-arid conditions through the integration of process-based transport modeling, probabilistic risk assessment, and multi-criteria decision analysis. Monte Carlo simulations and sensitivity analysis were employed to characterize exposure distributions. These analyses accounted for population variability and parameter uncertainty more effectively than single-point deterministic approaches. Simulation results indicated that human health and environmental risks arise from interactions between environmental transport processes and dietary patterns, with residue concentration emerging as the dominant contributor to overall uncertainty. The multi-criteria decision analysis module provides transparent decision support for agricultural management. This in silico framework offers a reproducible approach for risk evaluations in data-limited settings and supports adaptation to other agricultural systems following appropriate local parameterization, providing a practical tool for risk-informed agricultural management in semi-arid environments.

کلیدواژه ها:

Ethephon ، tomato ، human health risk assessment ، Monte Carlo simulation ، HYDRUS-۱D