China issues Group Standard of Pesticide QR Code Encoding Rule

China’s Group Standard of Pesticide QR Code Encoding Rule was published on May 18, 2016. The rule was proposed by the China Crop Protection Industry Association (CCPIA), jointly formulated by pesticide industry experts, manufacturers, and QR code institutions. The standard specifies the features, formats, and symbols of pesticide QR code structure, which apply to pesticide information exchange and information processing on pesticides in production or during transportation, storage, sales, service, and tracking.

 

After the rule comes into effect, the QR code system, which currently begins at the source of production, will address issues of tracking information not being reliable and the tracking interface not being synced with other inputs.

 

The Group Standard of Pesticide QR Code Encoding Rule takes into account the different needs of various stakeholders. For instance, the code information on the level of toxicity gives an easy reading of information on highly toxic pesticides to improve their supervision. The code information on material/texture allows for a reading of the pesticide’s minimum packaging details to enable the supervision of recovery and disposal of the waste packaging. To address the issue of fake and poor-quality pesticides, the QR code system provides fast recognition and identification. Further, the adoption of this standard will greatly promote the agricultural “internet +” initiative, which will expose all agricultural counterfeits for better industry regulation.