Maize plants, grown on a German soil and a Korean soil which had treated with benzene-ring-labelled $^{14}C-Bentazon$ (5.02mg/kg) immediately before planting (T-0), took up $36.0{sim}42.8%$ of the radioactivity present during a 21 day growing period. Plants grown on the same soils $(4.79{sim}4.84mg/kg)$ which had been treated with Bentazon and pre-incubeted for 105days absorbed $8.2{sim}14.2%$ (T-1) of the radioactivity. Plants grown in soils $(5.56{sim}7.95mg/kg)$ treated with Bentazon which had been incubated for 105 days and then exhaustively extracted with distilled water and/or 0.01 M $CaCl_2$ to produce non-extractable residues (T-2) took up $1.8{sim}2.3%$ of the radioactivity. The distribution of the absorbed radioactivity ranged from 2.7 to 9.7% in shoots and from 90.3 to 97.3% in roots. Extraction of maize roots revealed that $39.1{sim}51.3%$ of the radioactivity was bound in T-0 and $55.7{sim}63.1%$ was bound in T-1, This suggests hat polar metabolites and parent Bentazon might be present as conjugates.