Pesticide registration/review is always interesting, if nothing else.
The 9th Circuit Court once again as ruled that all Lorsban registrations should be cancelled. This was more over procedural issues than safety, but safety is consistent area of discussion. DOW is working to maintain those labels and for now we still have them. The Department of Justice petitioned for a hearing, which halts the Court’s decision until the hearing takes place. The Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, wrote a bulletin on this case that can be found at:
https://sitecontent.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDAOC/bulletins/20f976e
In other action, EPA has proposed actions on a variety of pesticides with public comment open through Oct 9 2018. Two actions of concern are:
Limit oxamyl (Vydate, etc.) to 4 applications for all crops (including pepper which currently allows 8) and eliminate use on eggplant.
Limit use of emamectin benzoate (Proclaim) to 0.06 lb AI per crop for Brassica and 0.04 for other crops.
Why is this a concern and what should we comment upon:
Oxymyl – they appear to assume most of the needed use is for nematodes in emerged crops. We now rely heavily on this product for pepper weevil control. They assume we have alternative products for most insect control, but are not aware of the pyrethroid resistance issues. If the pyrethroids still worked, we would not need oxamyl. Also, they likely are not aware that pepper weevil is now reproducing in eggplant and we need efficacious products in this crop as well.
Emamectin benzoate – diamondback moth (need I say more). Proclaim has been one of the few products that has provided fairly good, consistent control in the past two years. While restricting the number of applications would probably be good for resistance management, it would impact control programs.
TO COMMENT GO TO:
https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=EPA-HQ-OPP-2011-0483-0050
Click on the “Comment Now!” button in the upper right and submit your comments.