Potato Review

14 POTATO REVIEW MARCH/APRIL 2020 CUPGRA 2019 CONFERENCE Building resilience O ne of the problems the industry is facing is that crop protection product registration is more based around emotion than science, according to Bayer Global Crop Manager for Vegetables and Potatoes, Albert Schirring. At a European scale, he sees a lack of transparency on how decisions are made, leading to a loss of trust at member-state Call for transparency on crop protection product decisions One of the problems the industry is facing is that crop protection product registration is more based around emotion than science, according to Bayer Global Crop Manager for Vegetables and Potatoes, Albert Schirring. level and even down to food production. In addition, the typical consumer is lacking the education to understand where the food is coming from, and how it is being produced. The criteria for European Union regulation concerning crop protection products changed in 2011. One of the main features of this new regime was the ‘cut-off criteria’ which meant that if a product did not meet a certain threshold, it would not be considered in any degree for future registration in Europe. Those which had been registered have now disappeared, which puts a lot of pressure on the crop protection system. Furthermore, The Sustainable Use Directive of 2018 is very much directed towards crop protection products, and since implementation it has created issues with availability of products. For example, for early blight ( Alternaria spp ) the number of modes of action (MOA) available are seven, if combinations made with mancozeb are included. If not, the number goes down to four. This small diversity of MOA makes resistance management more difficult. “At the moment control for late blight ( Phytophthora infestans ) looks pretty good; for resistance management we need between three and five MOA,” said Albert. “However, a lot of these are associated with mancozeb and we are hearing rumours that it is an active which is likely to disappear from the European market.” He went on to reveal that for crop protection, Europe has been split into three regions: The Nordics and Scandinavia; the central zone which includes Germany, the Netherlands and the UK; and the south, which is made up of Spain and France, amongst others. “The thinking behind this is that once a product is approved for registration for one country, it is automatically given approval in the other countries within that particular zone.” Sometimes this has worked, but not always, delegates heard. Looking forward, he noted that regulation in the EU is currently under review, with a report due to be published by May this year. Reflecting on the history of regulation of