Аннотация:The article contains the results of the methodological developments in the assessment of biological activity and biodestructor’s function of soils by the rate of oxygen consumption. The first part of the work concerns the description of methods for the assessment of biological oxygen consumption in the soil based on portable gas analyzers, as well as environmental regulation of this indicator. The primary outcome was the scale of gradations of biological oxygen uptake in soils with a range of quantities of potential biological activity from "very low" (<2 gO2∙m–3∙hour–1) to "extremely high" (>140 gO2∙m–3∙hour–1), obtained on the basis of statistical processing of data array 1308 measurements. In the second part of the study, oxygen consumption is used to assess the stability of the protective hydrogel compositions based on silver for the rhizosphere of plants, including a new type of polymer acrylic hydrogels with amphiphilic peat filler. It is assumed the integrated use of the gel for the purposes of improving the water-holding capacity of soils and their structural status, as well as to place in the rhizosphere of modern crop protection products in the swollen gel compositions. The most effective plant protection products is expected to be silver. Pure acrylic polymer hydrogels had the rate of oxygen consumption from 0.2 to 2 g∙m–3∙hour–1, which corresponded to the periods of their half-lives from 0.20.1 to 6.8 4.5 years, or relatively low resistance to biodestruction. In contrast to the pure gels, hydrogel compositions for rhizosphere based on ionic and colloidal silver showed low biological activity (oxygen consumption 0.01-0.2 g∙m–3∙hour–1) and, accordingly, significant resistance to biodegradation with half-lives from 5 to 70 years and above. Since biodegradation is one of the main limiting factors in the use of hydrogels in soils, introduction to their composition of the silver inhibitors may be a promising means of solving this technological problem.