FUTURE AVAILABILITY OF PESTICIDES IN THE INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT AGRICULTURAL PROGRAMME IN ITALY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE APPLICATION OF THE NEW EUROPEAN REGULATION NO.1107/2009 CONCERNING THE PLACING OF PLANT PROTECTION PRODUCTS ON THE MARKET: IMPACT OF THE APPLICATION OF CUT-OFF CRITERIA AND SELECTION CRITERIA FOR SUBSTANCES THAT ARE CANDIDATE FOR SUBSTITUTION

ENEA – UTAGRI-ECO (Lab. Sustainable Management of the Agro-Ecosystems), with the Emilia-Romagna Phytosanitary Service and EUROPASS contributions conducted a study in order to discover the availability of active substances for defence strategy programmes once the European regulation no. 1107/2009 for the placing of plant protection products on the market has been applied. Based on the information in the EU and EFSA reports, 200 active substances have been analyzed from those that are of priority interest in agronomical defense strategy. Taking current scientific knowledge into account, the study has allowed us to identify the active substances that meet the cut-off criteria or are candidate for substitution and also permitted us to estimate the possible consequences on agricultural production. Amongst the herbicides that we analyzed, about 11.4% fell into the cut-off group whilst for the fungicides and insecticides they were 9.5% and 4% respectively. A greater number of substances meet the criteria of substances that are candidate for substitution, in particular 24.5% of the insecticides that we analyzed, 15.9% for fungicides and 8% for herbicides. In general there were 82 active substances that will meet or probably meet the cut-off or candidate for substitution criteria (30 herbicides, 27 fungicides and 25 insecticides). We would like to underline, however, that currently, there are significant margins of subjectivity in the choices made for using data for the cut-off and candidate for substitution parameters. Given these important critical points that will be decisive in the evaluation process of active substances that will be subject to the authorization process before being released onto the market, we would hope that at European and national level, the criteria will be established soonest in order to see correct application of the regulations. keywords: pesticides, plant protection product, regulation 1107/2009, cut-off criteria, candidate for substitution criteria keywords: pesticides, plant protection product, regulation 1107/2009, cut-off criteria, candidate for substitution criteria