Greg Hughes and Adrian Terry have co-authored a journal article on the CropLife Europe Crop Development Database, now published in the SETAC IEAM journal. A summary of the article is provided below:
Journal article authors: Gregory O. Hughes, Andrew Eatherall, Michael Bird, Jonathon Blake, Philip R. Branford, Sebastian Gebler, Anthony Lozano, Paul A. Massey, Gerald Reinken, Adrian S. Terry, Elizabeth H. Whitworth
There is a regulatory need for crop development dates to assess current default values used within chemical exposure assessments as well as to justify refinements within risk assessments. However, a readily available pan-European crop phenology database covering key FOrum for the Co-ordination of pesticide fate models and their USe (FOCUS) crops and scenarios to meet this need is not currently available. Therefore, we describe the development of a harmonized, pan-European, CropLife Europe Crop Development Database (C2D2), that is fully aligned with this regulatory requirement utilizing efficacy trials data generated for regulatory submissions when registering plant protection products under Regulation (EU)1107/2009. Evaluation of C2D2 against an independent data set showed good agreement for equivalent time periods, crop growth stages, and geographical regions. We illustrate how this database can be used to evaluate existing default crop development dates mandated by regulatory agencies for use within exposure assessments. Despite the large data set compiled and the geographical coverage of C2D2, not all FOCUSsw/gw scenarios have sufficient data to facilitate comparison, with less significant scenarios, like FOCUSgw Porto, being underrepresented. For those scenarios with sufficient data, clear differences between C2D2 and crop development dates assumed in the FOCUS modeling framework (using the AppDate tool) are often indicated over many growth stages, suggesting that amendment of the existing representation of crop development within the risk assessment process may be required. C2D2 is freely available under a Creative Commons license to facilitate innovation in exposure science to allow for more accurate and realistic risk assessment leading to enhanced crop and environmental protection.
You can read the full open-access article on the IEAM website.
A poster summarising the work within this journal article is also available, which was presented at SETAC Dublin in May 2023.
You can find all of our publications from conferences and links to journal articles we have authored on our library page.
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