We have studied the structural effects of application to the soil of a potentially detrimental herbicide, 4,6-dinitroorthocresol (DNOC) by analysing amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis (ARDRA) and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) signatures of 16S rDNA fragments of culturable bacterial communities isolated from diluted soil suspensions. This approach has the potential to reveal changes induced by stressing the soil microflora with DNOC. This paper shows that, whereas only few changes of the ARDRA and T-RFLP profiles result from ageing of the soil, treatment of the soil with DNOC induces major modifications of these profiles. Therefore, for the practical purpose of pesticide registration, ARDRA and T-RFLP analysis performed on the dominant culturable fraction of the soil bacteria, implemented using conventional gel electrophoresis, offers the means of a routine, simple and meaningful test for detecting some of the changes affecting the structure of the soil microflora in response to pesticide application.