Pesticide Potpourri

• Asian soybean rust has been spotted in Louisiana 53 days earlier than last year, boosting concerns the air-borne spores could reach the Midwest for the early part of the growing season.  Asian soybean rust, which left untreated can wipe out up to 80 percent of yields, hasn't been found in Canada yet but the worry is the spores could have time to spread to the northern United States and Ontario this summer.  Last year by the time the fungal disease moved north in the United States, soybeans were harvested or close to being harvested.  The cold weather causes the disease to retreat back to the southern U.S. each winter (Windsor Star, 5/18/07).
•  The U.S. government approved in mid-May plans by Ventria Bioscience of Sacramento, California, to grow up to 3,200 acres of genetically modified rice in Geary County, Kansas, to produce proteins that would be used in medicine to treat diarrhea.  Company president Scott Deeter was cited as saying that Ventria plans to grow the rice on only 250 acres, adding, “We have grown it for nine years in North Carolina, California and South America as well.”  The approval by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) fuels concerns that another GMO crop will contaminate the U.S. food and feed supply.  The USA Rice Producers' Group Chairman was quoted as saying, “The U.S. rice industry is still reeling from the release of Bayer CropScience's genetically engineered LibertyLink® rice into U.S. Delta-region rice fields.  We are living with the effect of unintended events and consequences.  This decision will not generate any comfort among U.S. commercial rice growers.”  APHIS received more than 20,000 comments on Ventria's application, with only 29 groups or individuals supporting the planting of the GMO rice in Kansas.  (Reuters, 5/16/06).
•  Funding for a two-year program to find out whether agricultural pesticide applications are a public health risk in Washington State was included in the recently approved state budget.  Under the program the state Department of Health will set up air monitors where farms and orchards border schools and day-care centers.  The monitors will measure how far and in what concentration pesticides drift from their intended targets.  The Legislature appropriated $538,000 for the pilot program.  (Yakima Herald-Republic, 5/17/07).
•  Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have joined a multinational effort to stop the red palm mite (Raoiella indica), an invasive pest that rides the wind and, until now, was mainly known for attacking coconut palms in the Eastern Hemisphere's tropical and subtropical regions.  According to a mite expert at the ARS Systematic Entomology Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, the red palm mite has been found in the Caribbean region, including Puerto Rico and St. Thomas.  The fast spread of this pest, which causes serious leaf damage, constitutes the biggest mite explosion ever observed in the Americas.  In Trinidad, ARS researchers estimated there were 30 to 100 million mites per palm.  At stake may be more than just the health of the ornamental plant industry and the palm trees that are synonymous with the tropical lifestyle.  On Dominica, the mite has attacked banana plants, and a grower in Trinidad indicated that he anticipates a 50 percent loss in coconut production on his property.  The red palm mite was first described in 1924 in India, and identified in the Western Hemisphere three years ago on Martinique.  Infestation signs include yellow-spotted or totally discolored palm leaves, and reddish-brown areas signaling mite clusters.  (ARS News, 5/18/07). 
•  California plans to enact the most costly pesticide regulation in state history as it cracks down on use of fumigants in farm fields to comply with a court-ordered deadline to combat smog.  Under the proposed regulation, California will be the first place in the nation to target the widely used chemicals, imposing statewide restrictions on how fumigants are applied as well as limits on use in three farming regions.  State officials warned that the cost will be extremely high - estimated at $10 million to $40 million a year - and that growers of strawberries, carrots, tomatoes and peppers will bear the brunt of it.  The biggest burden will fall on Ventura County's strawberry growers, who will face strict caps on emissions and may have to resort to pulling thousands of acres out of production to meet the smog targets.  The director of public policy for the California Strawberry Commission was quoted as saying, “We are very concerned about the cost of the regulation.  Using old, obsolete data, they are imposing a regulation that could drive a third of the acreage out of production in Ventura.”  (Los Angeles Times, 5/18/07).
•  The National Biosafety Technical Commission of Brazil (CTNBio) voted to permit planting, 17 votes against 4, of LibertyLink® biotech corn with tolerance to the herbicide glufosinate, developed by Bayer CropScience.  The decision has still to be ratified by the National Committee of Biotechnology before commercial planting can take place.  CTNBio will implement a practical plan for monitoring the biotech corn, which will include restrictions to prevent its planting in protected areas.  The decision makes LibertyLink® corn the third biotech crop to be approved in Brazil, after Roundup Ready® soybean and B.t. cotton.  (CropBiotech, 5/18/07).