The present study has been carried out to study clinical signs, alteration in feed consumption, apoptosis in liver tissue and pathomorphological changes induced by Acephate toxicity in rats. Accordingly, fourty adult Wistar rats were divided uniformly into four equal groups Viz. Group C1, Group T1, Group T2 and Group T3. Group C1 was administered distilled water and served as pesticide vehicle control. Group T1 (low dose) rats received 1/40th of LD50, group T2 (mid dose) received 1/20th of LD50 and group T3 (high dose) received 1/10th of LD50 of Acephate suspended in distilled water for 28 days. The clinical symptoms were observed in high dose group i.e. T3. The most common signs were sudden onset of depression, reduced feed intake, dullness, salivation and tremor (in few rats). While in mid dose Acephate treated group T2, rats were dull and depressed. In low dose Acephate treated group T1, no visible clinical signs of toxicity were observed. There was no statistically significant effect on body weight up to 3rd week of experiment in Acephate treated groups. There was significant (p≤0.05) decrease in mean live body weight in male and female rats treated with high dose of Acephate during the 4th week of exposure as compared to control group. There was no statistically significant effect on feed consumption up to 2nd week of experiment in all Acephate treated groups. There was significant (p≤0.05) decrease in feed consumption from 3rd week in high and mid dose and highly significant (p≤0.01) decrease in feed consumption in high dose from 4th week in male and female rats as compared to control group. All the rats exposed to Acephate at three different dose levels revealed dose dependant pathological changes. The main target organs affected were found to be liver, kidney, brain and testis. The pathomorphological changes comprised varying degrees of congestion, hemorrhages, degeneration, and necrosis in various visceral organs and lysis of lymphoid cells in spleen. The severity and distribution of such lesions were found higher in rats of Group T3 followed by group T2. No appreciable changes were observed in rats of group T1 receiving low dose of Acephate. The molecular detection of apoptosis by DNA ladder assay of liver tissue revealed the smearing effect of apoptosis due to DNA fragmentation in the lanes of agarose gel electrophoresis in almost all the samples of liver tissue of treatment group in a dose dependant manner. 1349322547.php