There are great opportunities for partnerships by working with other publically funded global minor use programs. Working cooperatively, IR-4 can leverage other countries’ contributions of research data to better harmonize pesticide standards, thus providing more opportunity for U.S. specialty crop growers to export their produce. For example, IR-4 has been working in cooperation with Canada for 15 years on a number of projects that have led to tolerances for both countries. The cooperation saves IR-4 an estimated $500,000 per year, which allows funding for other U.S. grower priorities. IR-4 has also initiated formal partnerships with New Zealand, Brazil and Costa Rica. These cooperative research programs will benefit US growers in a similar way as the partnership with Canada. Specialty crops are also very important to Asia, Africa and Latin America. IR-4 is working with these countries and hope this collaboration will provide valuable partnerships in contributing data to solve minor use issues.
A key action item identified at the first Global Minor Use Summit in 2007, was to support greater capacity development in areas of need. This included the promotion of lower risk pesticides, along with increased coordination and cooperation to assist developing countries in generating pesticide residue data. Over the course of the five years that followed the first summit, the USDA took the lead and provided resources for a number of meetings and workshops to increase communication and coordination within the three regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The second Minor Use Summit further endorsed this work and at approximately the same time (March 2012), specific grants were secured to initiate further training modules and residue studies in these regions. The residue projects chosen focused specifically on newer reduced risk products (azoxystrobin, spinetoram, and pyriproxyfen) on tropical fruits as a crop group, especially the inedible peel CODEX subgroup 6B.
These products are also important to the United States because IR-4 had helped secure access to these products on tropical fruits, largely by using extrapolation from existing data on other crops such as pome, stone and citrus fruits that precluded data to support Codex Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs).
The final expectation for these global projects would be to help generate data that could be submitted to the Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) and ultimately establish Codex MRLs.
The objective of these projects is to enhance the capacity of participating nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America to meet pesticide-related requirements. Based on international (Codex) standards, this cooperation will also increase opportunities for international trade of U.S. grown specialty crop exports.
All three of the regions participating in this project have now received funding from Standards Trade Development Facility (STDF) and USDA Foreign Agriculture Service (USDA-FAS), which also provides support for IR-4’s contributions to each of the projects. This objective is being achieved by collaborative residue data generation that incorporates all technical aspects of these studies. This work will further develop expertise in these nations to conduct field and laboratory pesticide residue studies under Good Laboratory Practices and support their ability to provide data to local authorities and Codex for product registrations, particularly on lower risk products. Work in the three regions is progressing and is in various stages, with the commitment to start making submissions to JMPR in 2015.
Regional updates.
Each region has received funding to support three years of work. The first year covers training for conducting GLP field trials, establishing committees to provide administrative and technical support, as well as the responsibility for making project selections. The second year encompasses the initiation of the studies with actual GLP field trials and analytical work. In the final year, data would be collated into reports. At the end of the three year grant period, submissions would be made to the JMPR and local regulatory authorities. Thus far, training has involved nearly 200 field scientists and nearly 100 chemists.
The first region to start work was the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Training workshops were held in a number of different countries in the preceding years and in May 2012, the first field treatments were made in Malaysia involving pyriproxyfen on mango. This study was performed in cooperation with Singapore who conducted the laboratory analysis. By January 2013, the second study was initiated in Thailand for spinetoram on mango. Other studies will start soon and include pyriproxyfen on papaya in the Philippines and a pre-mix of azoxystrobin and difenconazole on dragon fruit. An additional study in Thailand will involve spinetoram on longan or lychee. In addition to field training, laboratory workshops on GLP method validation have been conducted in Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. For those studies in progress, some samples are already being analyzed for residues, and it is anticipated that by December of 2015, several reports will be ready for submission to JMPR.
In Africa and Latin America, extensive GLP training has taken place and the appropriate committees have been established. They have also selected projects and are in the process of initiating studies with field trial applications planned in the coming months. It is expected that the Latin American project will have the first applications of pyriproxyfen scheduled for bananas in Costa Rica late this winter, pineapples in Panama this spring and avocados in Peru will start in May. Additional field and lab training will be associated with each of these events, and should allow the lab analysis to follow shortly after samples are harvested from these studies. The other Latin American countries conducting studies are Colombia, Guatemala and Bolivia. Studies expected in Africa will include work primarily with bananas, papaya, pineapple, passion fruit, guava, date and palm. Countries include Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. These studies should begin later in 2014. Other studies will be initiated in Morocco, and Egypt, but are not part of the STDF grants.
It is also important to note that some of the regions are conducting similar studiessuch as spinetoram on bananas in Uganda, and Bolivia. Hopefully when these studies are complete it will further support IR-4’s work to collate global data sets to help ease regional data requirements, while still providing a robust regulatory data package.
It is IR-4’s vision, that at the end of these capacity building projects, there will be a global network of capable minor use programs that can partner, when appropriate, with IR-4 to address domestic and international grower needs.
List of IR-4 and other US participants
ASEAN
Michael Braverman, IR-4
Elizabeth Culbert, IR-4 WA State Lab.
Wayne Jiang, IR-4 MSU lab.
Jason Sandahl, USDA-FAS
David Grist, USDA-FAS
Elizabeth Johnson, USDA-FAS
Miguel Gonzalez, USDA-FAS
Caitrin Martin, USDA-FAS
Latin America
Edith Lurvey, IR-4
Dan Kunkel, IR-4
Debra Edwards, consultant coordination of administrative and technical committees
Amy Wang, consultant - field
Milena Ramirez,
consultant - Lab
Jason Sandahl, USDA-FAS
David Grist, USDA-FAS
Elizabeth Johnson, USDA-FAS
AFRICA
Michael Braverman, IR-4
Joe Defrancesco, IR-4 field training
Dan Kunkel, IR-4
Debra Edwards, consultant coordination of administrative and technical committees
Jason Sandahl, USDA-FAS
David Grist, USDA-FAS
Elizabeth Johnson, USDA-FA
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