37th Meeting of the Working Party on Plant Protection Products
Bucharest, 2007-05-22/24
The 37th Meeting of the Working Party on Plant Protection Products took place in Bucharest on 2007-05-22/24, at the kind invitation of the Romanian NPPO. The meeting took place at the Central Laboratory for Phytosanitary Quarantine. The Romanian hosts, Mrs Iurascu and her colleagues, received 22 participants from 16 EPPO member countries and ECPA with warm hospitality.
This EPPO Working Party directs and supervises the technical work of many EPPO Panels concerned with the registration of plant protection products. The report of the meeting prepared for the EPPO Council and Executive Committee presents in greater detail the discussions, decisions and recommendations which were made by the Working Party; some of major points are summarized here.
EPPO Standards for approval
The Working Party on Plant Protection Products continues to approve a steady flow of new or revised EPPO Standards in series PP1 Efficacy Evaluation of Plant Protection Products. Altogether 3 general and 7 specific standards in this series are to be submitted to the Executive Committee and Council of EPPO in September 2007 for definitive approval and publication.
The revision of the general standards on efficacy evaluation PP 1/207 Effects on succeeding crops and two new standards entitled Effects on adjacent crops and Efficacy and crop safety extrapolations for minor uses have been finalized. The later is the first outcome of the new activity of EPPO on minor uses. This standard describes the principles of extrapolation regarding the efficacy and crop safety of plant protection products intended for minor uses. It provides guidance for regulatory authorities and applicants in the context of the registration of plant protection products for minor uses. It also provides detailed lists of acceptable extrapolations in a crop grouping format, and these will be added as they are developed.
Five specific standards on efficacy evaluation have been revised: Aphids on top fruit (revised PP 1/21), Weeds in lupin and Vicia beans (revised PP 1/53), Weeds in forage legumes (revised PP 1/76), Weeds in Phaseolusand Pisum (revised PP 1/91), Weeds in cereals (revised PP 1/93).
Two new standards have been developed: Delia radicum on oilseed rape and Pleospora allii on pear.
Programme of activity
The Working Party realized that the whole programme of activity centres around the creation and revision of general and specific standards on efficacy evaluation. It was clear that these standards are very much in demand and their maintenance and further development is a key activity of the Organization. A large number of new specific standards was proposed. EPPO Standard PP 1/70 Side-effects on honey-bees will be revised together with the ICPBR (International Commission for Plant-Bee Relationships) expert group.
The Working Party re-considered its future activities on minor uses and resistance. It agreed that after the standard Efficacy and crop safety extrapolation for minor uses is adopted, the Panels on Efficacy Evaluation should start to develop tables with specific extrapolations, based on crop/pest groupings and according to the format developed by the Panel on General Standards. Concerning resistance, it is planned to develop an online database of resistance expertise available in EPPO countries to improve information exchange within the region.
The Working Party was presented the new version of EPPT (EPPO Plant Protection Thesaurus) that can now be accessed freely on the EPPO website.
Discussion subjects
The following important topics were discussed by the Working Party: mutual recognition, the concept of “comparative assessment” which is being introduced in the revision of the EU Directive 91/414, assessment of benefits of plant protection products, loss of product diversity (as result of the EC review programme) that particularly affects minor crops and uses and may increase resistance management problems. The Working Party explored the possibilities for developing further some of these topics. In the meantime, it considered a possibility for the EPPO website to link to informative documents which explore opportunities to increase benefits and reduce health and environmental risks of plant protection products use.
In response to a request from the Working Party, a link to the document entitled “Pesticides and humanity: the benefits of using pesticides” 
developed by the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, UK, on the request of CropLife International is provided. In order to inform a more balanced view of pesticide use, this study was carried out to identify and characterize the various types of benefit and where possible find publications to support them.
This document is not an official EPPO document. It does not necessarily reflect the views of EPPO and is made available for information purposes only.
The next Working Party meeting is planned to take place in Algeria, 2008-05-20/22.