Sulfonylureas are an important group of herbicides widely used for a range of weeds and grasses control particularly in cereals. However, some of them tend to persist for years in environments. Hydrolysis is the primary pathway for their degradation. To understand the hydrolysis behavior of sulfonylurea herbicides, the hydrolysis mechanism of metsulfuron-methyl, a typical sulfonylurea, was investigated using density functional theory (DFT) at the B3LYP/6-31[Formula: see text]G(d,p) level. The hydrolysis of metsulfuron-methyl resembles nucleophilic substitution by a water molecule attacking the carbonyl group from aryl side (pathway a) or from heterocycle side (pathway b). In the direct hydrolysis, the carbonyl group is directly attacked by one water molecule to form benzene sulfonamide or heterocyclic amine; the free energy barrier is about 52–58[Formula: see text]kcal[Formula: see text]mol[Formula: see text]. In the autocatalytic hydrolysis, with the second water molecule acting as a catalyst, the free energy barrier, which is about 43–45[Formula: see text]kcal[Formula: see text]mol[Formula: see text], is remarkably reduced by about 11[Formula: see text]kcal[Formula: see text]mol[Formula: see text]. It is obvious that water molecules play a significant catalytic role during the hydrolysis of sulfonylureas.
