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Electronic Rothamsted Archive |
Advances in fungicide chemistry have helped cereal growers respond to the competitive pressures arising from CAP reform, by reducing unit cost. Despite rationalisation in the agrochemical industry, the flow of novel active ingredients continues. New products command premium prices, so it is important that growers have access to independent data on their performance, in order to weigh benefits against costs and ensure that fungicides are used rationally.
Active ingredients can remain on the market for many years and some of the established materials offer useful disease control at a lower price. However, the performance of pesticides is not static. Over time, less sensitive pathogen strains are selected, resulting in a shift in the dose-response curve. Hence, the dose (and hence input cost) required to achieve effective control can change.
Several independent European institutes gather fungicide data. The development of secure databases linked to the Internet, provides a mechanism for collaborators in different countries to share a common dataset. Also, new statistical techniques mean that the performance of new products assessed by different organisations could be related directly to the performance of products in an existing dataset, via the performance of 'standards'.
This database forms part of the Appropriate Doses Network, established between the The Danish Institute of Agricultural Science, TEAGASC in Eire and ADAS, Morley Research Centre, Central Science Laboratory and Rothamsted Research in the UK. The network provides for the reciprocal exchange of fungicide data, allowing robust information to be accumulated, analysed and disseminated to growers, within the short period when new actives are made available for evaluation prior to launch.