Pollution in the fashion industry impact on the environment, the natural crop growing fibers also have been contributing to pollution through the form of agriculture. Cotton production requires a large amount of pesticides and water use. Cotton is considered the world's dirtiest crop because it uses 16% of the world's pesticides. Two of the main ingredients in pesticides are nitrates and phosphates. When the pesticides leak into stream systems surrounding the cropland the nitrates and phosphates contribute to water eutrophication. Water eutrophication is an environmental phenomenon that causes a depletion of oxygen when the nutrient overload from pesticides causes a boom in plant growth and
Plant defense against herbivory change their defenses in response to changes in nutrients. For example, if plants are grown in low-nitrogen conditions, then these plants will implement a defensive strategy composed of constitutive carbon-based defenses. If nutrient levels subsequently increase, by for example the addition of fertilizers, these carbon-based defenses will decrease. The growth rate hypothesis, also known as the "resource availability hypothesis", states that defense strategies are determined by the inherent growth rate of the plant, which is in turn determined by the resources available to the plant. A major assumption is that available resources are the limiting factor in determining the maximum