CEA presented 16 posters at SETAC Dublin in April/May 2023. We will be showcasing each of these presentations in a series of ‘SETAC Spotlight’ articles. This week it is:

C2D2: An Open-Source, Pan-European, Harmonised Crop Development Database for use in Pesticide Exposure Modelling and Risk Assessment

Authors: G.O. Hughes1,10; A. Eatherall2; M. Bird3; G. Reinken4; P.R. Branford5; S. Gebler6; A. Lozano7; P.A. Massey8; E. Whitworth9 and J. Blake9.

Affiliations: 1 Cambridge Environmental Assessments associate; 2 Corteva Agriscience; 3 Syngenta Ltd; 4 Bayer AG; 5 ADAMA Agricultural Solutions; 6 BASF SE; 7 Sumitomo Chemical; 8 FMC, 9 ADAS, 10 GeoSpatial Analytics

Determining appropriate pesticide application windows is an important part of pesticide exposure modelling. Increasingly, regulators are constraining application windows using the AppDate software. Given exposure assessments are a function of the application dates this software generates, it is important to understand how representative they are; however, an appropriate pan-European crop phenology dataset was previously unavailable for such an assessment. Efficacy trial datasets sourced from seven members have been harmonised to create the Crop Life Europe Crop Development Database (C2D2) that meets this need. C2D2 has been made freely available under a Creative Commons licence and comprises crop development data that spans two decades (2000-2020), >250 crops and 30 European countries.

Despite the large dataset compiled and the geographical coverage of C2D2, not all FOCUSsw/gw scenarios have sufficient data to facilitate comparison, with smaller scenarios, like FOCUSgw Porto, being under-represented. For those scenarios with sufficient data, significant differences between the CLE and AppDate crop development dates are often indicated over some/many growth stages suggesting that amendment of the existing representation of crop development within the risk assessment process may be required. While the provenance of the data underpinning AppDate crop development is not documented in the software manual and associated reports, much of the difference is ascribed to C2D2 comprising mostly post-2010 data describing crop development of modern crop cultivars bred to match current agronomic and weather constraints more closely.

C2D2 will be made freely available under a Creative Commons licence to facilitate innovation in exposure science to allow for more accurate and realistic risk assessment leading to enhanced crop and environmental protection.

If you would like to discuss any of the topics raised in this article, feel free to contact us.

The poster is available for free download.

You can find all of the other posters that CEA presented at SETAC Dublin here. You can also find all of our publications from previous conferences and links to journal articles we have authored on our library page.

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