By Fang Lin on Thursday, 3 July 2014 in Agrochemical News

On 12 Jun 2014, ICAMA invited experts to consult on the “Catalogue of Residual Test Sites for Minor-Crop Use Pesticide Registration”, which is an important supporting document for the upcoming “Special Provisions of Pesticide Registration for Vegetables and Featured Crops Use (Interim)”. The provisions were formulated to facilitate the registration process of pesticide used for minor crop.

In China some crops are highly valued, not widely cultivated and due to their rarity relatively expensive. However, it is usually not financially viable for pesticide companies to register the pesticides used in their cultivation as the low sales volume makes registration financially unfeasible. A cost benefit analysis quickly reveals that minor crop products have little incentive to register their pesticides. The negative incentive offered by the mandatory requirement to register pesticides and the associated punitive measures facing violators is of little concern to a significant proportion of cultivators. These vague deterrents have done little to dissuade these cultivators from using all pesticides at their disposal to ensure their crops are successful. Minor crops are vulnerable to a greater variety of pests and diseases in comparison to other crop varieties due to the reduced pesticide resources available to cultivators. Backing these assertions up is a survey conducted last year which gathered information from 29 provincial areas. There are 911 products used on 289 kinds of minor crops, but only 190 of the products have been issued with pesticide registration certificates(see ChemLinked news release on 18 Jul 2013). This unregulated environment poses major food safety and public health risks. Thus the MoA has formulated this special provision and the catalogue and is to amend the number of test sites required for different minor crops. The catalogue classifies crops into 24 categories and specifies the test site requirements for each category.During the consultation meeting experts have review each crop category and associated test site requirements and provided technical opinions for further improvement.