Northeast Region IPM Grants
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| States: | New York, Ohio |
| Investigators: | Petzoldt, C.H. J. Kovach |
| Institutions: |
Cornell University |
| Project Type: | extension |
| Award*: | $35,529 |
| Term: | 12 months beginning 9/1/01 |
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Crop: |
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*Award shown is total amount to be used over the course of the project term.
The Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ), an equation divided into Consumer, Farmworker, and Environmental effects of pesticides, was published in 1992 to enable farmers and agricultural professionals to compare pesticides on the basis of environmental risk. It has been widely used for this purpose by farmers, food processors, private consultants and those who analyze and compare pesticide use patterns over time. It has been updated regularly as new pesticides are registered. Most of the information used in the EIQ equation is available from pesticide manufacturers since it is required for registration. One piece of information critical to pest mangers that is not required and is not readily available is the impact of the pesticide on beneficial organisms. A database on beneficial arthropods from 1988 was used to develop the EIQ and it has not been updated since. Companies registering new pesticides are not required to develop this information for registration. We propose to devise a standardized technique to test pesticides against key beneficial organisms and test those pesticides currently listed in the EIQ plus several recently registered pesticides. We then plan to update the EIQ and make it available to users via the already heavily visited website and through professional meetings.
Comparing the environmental impact of pesticides has been a difficult issue
for many years. A number of attempts at comparison have been made over the years,
some more successful than others. Levitan et al (1995) has reviewed some of
the various methods of comparison. One of the most cited and used methods of
comparison is the Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ) developed by Kovach et
al (1992). The EIQ is an index that compares commonly used pesticides on the
basis of three broad categories - Consumer effects, Farmworker effects, and
Biological effects. Within these three categories various pesticide toxicity
characteristics, properties in soil and water, and other data are indexed into
a logical system resulting in an overall index or EIQ. The EIQ can then be used
in combination with the percent active ingredient in a pesticide formulation
and the rate used to calculate a Field Use EIQ. A farmer can use the Field Use
EIQ to make a decision among several choices of pesticides that have differing
environmental impact. This information has been available on the internet for
several years and is updated annually to include recently registered pesticides
(http://northeastipm.org/ny/program_news/EIQ.html).
The EIQ has also been widely cited and is used in many states in the US and
internationally. Over 10,000 copies of the original hardcopy EIQ publication
have been distributed upon request since 1992 and the EIQ website currently
gets about 400 visits per month. It is used in several state pesticide recommendation
documents - a field use EIQ value is reported for every listed pesticide in
the New York State Integrated Crop and Pest Management Guidelines for Commercial
Vegetable Production (Reiners et al 2000, Petzoldt et al 2000).
Studies of the impact of IPM have used the EIQ as a method to quantify the impact
of changes in pesticide use (Stivers 2000, Suckling et al 1999, Bellinder et
al 1998, Cooley et al 1996, Hoffmann et al 1995 ). Modifications to the EIQ
for specific uses have been developed or are underway for turf (Kovach, personal
communication) and in commercial settings (Stemilt, Reed personal communication.)
Most of the information that is used in the EIQ is relatively easy to obtain
from pesticide manufacturers because they are required to submit it to the EPA
for registration of the pesticide. One key item is not contained in the set
of information - impact on beneficial arthropods. A large database from Thieling
and Croft (1988) summarized studies of pesticide impacts on beneficial arthropods.
This database was used in the development of the EIQ for the beneficial arthropod
term. However, since the database is from 1988, no pesticides labeled in the
recent past have this information available. EPA does not require information
on impact on beneficial arthropods for product registration. Therefore as the
EIQ has been updated, this piece of information has been treated as "missing"
and an average of the value for all pesticides has instead been inserted into
the EIQ calculation. In addition, the impact of pesticides on beneficial organisms
other than just arthropods needs to be considered in the EIQ index.
Currently, little information on impacts of a diverse array of pesticides on
beneficial fungi is available. There is a need to consider the impacts of various
types of pesticide applications on the growth of such commercially available
fungi as Trichoderma harzianum and Beauavaria bassiana or bacteria such as Bacillus
subtilis. The EIQ is presented in a way on the website and in the publication
so that one can utilize the overall EIQ index or one can use the index resulting
from an individual component. The individual component index for beneficial
organisms will be useful to those who apply beneficial organisms and then need
to use a pesticide in order to manage a different pest or to provide additional
control of the original pest. The EIQ beneficial organism index could then be
used to make a pesticide choice that would preserve the activity of the beneficial
while still providing the needed pest control.
Statements of priority from stakeholders: EIQ information has been included
in the New York State Integrated Crop and Pest Management Guidelines for Commercial
Vegetable Production for the past three years as a result of requests from growers
to Cornell Cooperative Extension staff for information on which pesticides to
apply that result in less environmental harm. In addition, Wegmans Supermarkets
(a NE region supermarket chain in three states), Agrilink Foods (the largest
frozen vegetable processor in the US) and about 100 vegetable farmers in the
northeast make use of the EIQ annually as part of IPM labeling projects. It
is important to these many stakeholders that the EIQ reflect accurate and up
to date information in terms of impact on beneficial organisms and the effects
of newly registered pesticides on these organisms. Additionally, the proposed
work could impact all crops and pests on which pesticides are used by providing
environmental impact information to help applicators choose among pesticides.
Priorities for research and implementation of biological control and the use
of beneficial organisms in agricultural crops developed by stakeholders include
the following:
Cabbage Research and Development Program 11/17/2000 - New York "High Priority
- Biological Control of insects, diseases and/or weeds"
New York State IPM Program 2001 Priorities
Fruit - "Proposals will be funded that encourage the preservation of indigenous
beneficial organisms that can regulate pest populations on the crop or in the
soil and also the development or use of biological organisms that can be applied
to cropping systems for pest control."
Livestock/Field Crops - "High Priority - improve grower awareness and confidence
in comprehensive IPM strategies (cultural, biological, least toxic, and reduced
pesticide) that minimize impact of all major pests in production system while
optimizing net profitability and environmental impact."
Landscape and Nursery - "Biorational approaches to pest management."
Vegetable - "High - Improve our understanding of which are the most important
natural enemies and how insecticides may affect them. The objective is to devise
strategies to conserve the most important natural enemies through careful selection
of any needed pesticide applications."
All of these stakeholder-developed priorities point to the need to improve our
knowledge of the interaction of beneficial organisms and pesticides with the
idea of protecting the effectiveness of the beneficial organisms. The proposed
work will address these identified priorities by developing and refining a tool
that can be used by growers to make decisions about which pesticides to choose
to avoid damage to beneficial organisms.
1) Conduct a laboratory evaluation of the effect of a broad range of pesticides on the survival of beneficial organisms.
2) Develop two indices comparing the relative harm to the beneficial organisms by different pesticides.
3) Incorporate the indices into the already existing Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ) thus improving the reliability of the "beneficial" term in the EIQ equation.
4) Update EIQ information and add it to the existing EIQ website in order to
allow for dissemination of the information resulting from the project.
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2001 Northeast IPM Funded Projects |
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