Sceptre Project to preserve crop protection options

THE Sceptre Project is seeking to secure the necessary pesticides and production techniques for the vegetable industry in the future, the ADAS Syngenta Vegetable Conference was told.

Dr Tim O’Neill, principal research scientist with ADAS, told the conference that current legislative changes - and the prospect of more to come - were leaving gaps in the control options for growers.

Legislation
The four-year project aims to find ways of providing growers with more crop protection options as new European pesticide legislation takes effect.

The Chemicals Regulation Directorate (CRD) had been very supportive of the project from the outset. “It’s very much in their interest to see if they can help with the flow through the registration process,” said Dr O’Neill.

Syngenta field technical manager, Jon Ogborn, agreed that while some older products would inevitably be lost for vegetable crop growers over the coming years, there were plenty of exciting new options in the pipeline that would help fill the gaps and could offer better efficacy.

Syngenta will be trialling the company’s new broad-spectrum fungicide, Isopyrazam in fruit and vegetable crops. New downy mildew control options for onion and lettuce growers, based on the company’s mandipropamid blight fungicide, were also in evaluation, he said.