What was it all about? 

The generation of pesticide residue, efficacy and crop safety data is required to support label registration and minor use permit applications made to the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) which, when approved, provide access to safe and effective chemicals for the management of pests, weeds and diseases.

In May 2018, Hort Innovation announced the securing of more than $1 million in assistance grants under the Federal Government’s Access to Industry Uses of Agricultural and Veterinary (Agvet) Chemicals program. This funding was used, along with levy contributions, to generate the data required for a range of registration and minor use applications across a variety of horticulture crops through the project Generation of data for pesticide applications in horticulture crops 2018 (ST17000).

For the olive industry, the grant investment supported a Bayer DC-163 label registration application for the control of apple weevil (curculio beetle).

Separate to the grant funding, the project also produced data to support a Bayer label registration application for Sivanto (flupyradifurone) for the control of olive lace bug.

Data generation for other applications relevant to the olive industry was also supported by the multi-industry projects Generation of residue data for permit applications 2017 (MT17012) and Generation of residue, efficacy and crop safety data for pesticide applications in horticulture crops 2017 (ST16006), the latter of which involved grant funds from an earlier around of the Agvet program, plus some levy contributions.