Technical Note: Extending the SWAT2012 and SWAT+ models to simulate pesticide plant uptake processes

Abstract. The SWAT model is widely used for simulating pesticide fate and transport in agricultural watersheds but currently lacks the ability to represent chemical uptake by plants, which is a significant pathway particularly relevant for stable compounds that can persist in the root zone. To address this limitation, the publicly available SWAT code was modified to incorporate pesticide plant uptake processes, building upon recent improvements in chemical subsurface transport pathways. The implementation calculates chemical plant uptake based on plant water uptake, substance-specific uptake factors, and concentrations of the chemical in soil pore water. The enhanced model was tested in two agricultural catchments using a stable pesticide soil metabolite with known plant uptake characteristics. Results demonstrate that including plant uptake processes reduced metabolite concentrations in streamflow by 5–17 %. The implementation reveals the importance of plant uptake as a sink, particularly for persistent compounds, and provides new capabilities for assessing agricultural pesticide management practices or mitigation strategies and their effects on environmental fate. The functionality has been implemented in both SWAT2012 and SWAT+, with code provided as an electronic supplement to this technical note.