Potential to reduce pesticides in intensive apple production through management practices could be challenged by climatic extremes.

Apples are the third most produced fruit in the world, but their production is often pesticide-intensive. Our objective was to identify options for pesticide reduction using farmer records from 2549 commercial apple fields in Austria during five years between 2010 and 2016. Using generalized additive mixed modeling, we examined how pesticide use was related to farm management, apple varieties, and meteorological parameters, and how it affected yields and toxicity to honeybees.

Toxicological Comparison of Pesticide Active Substances Approved for Conventional vs. Organic Agriculture in Europe.

There is much debate about whether the (mostly synthetic) pesticide active substances (AS) in conventional agriculture have different non-target effects than the natural AS in organic agriculture. We evaluated the official EU pesticide database to compare 256 AS that may only be used on conventional farmland with 134 AS that are permitted on organic farmland. As a benchmark, we used (i) the hazard classifications of the Globally Harmonized System (GHS), and (ii) the dietary and occupational health-based guidance values, which were established in the authorization procedure.

Pesticides and public health: an analysis of the regulatory approach to assessing the carcinogenicity of glyphosate in the European Union.

The present paper scrutinises the European authorities' assessment of the carcinogenic hazard posed by glyphosate based on Regulation (EC) 1272/2008. We use the authorities' own criteria as a benchmark to analyse their weight of evidence (WoE) approach. Therefore, our analysis goes beyond the comparison of the assessments made by the European Food Safety Authority and the International Agency for Research on Cancer published by others.