Vol. 51—1997 - NorthEastern Weed Science Society

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e recent occurrence has been the increased pace of registrationrequests at EPA. In
Novemb 1995,EPA reported a dramatic increase in registrationapplicationsfor conventional
pesticide : new active ingredients,experimentaluse permits and new uses for existing active
ingredie . For the past five years or so, pesticide manufacturershave been incurring costs to
reregiste older pesticides. Now that re-registrationcosts are largelybehind them, companies are
increasin ly focussed on commercializingnew activeingredients. Someof these new applications
will be f r minor crop herbicides. Much of the gloomythinkingabout minor crops has been the
result of the lost registrationsin the past five years. In the future,it is likely that registrants
wi11100kto minor crops for increased sales.
ith regard to herbicideresistant crops for minor uses, if registrantsselect an herbicide
with pri clearance on another crop, then much of the cost of EPA clearance already would
already ave been expended. As a result, it may be economicalfor a chemical company to obtain
EPA de ces for genetically-alteredminor crops. On the otherhand, if an herbicideis effective
and not hytotoxic to a minor crop and is registered for a major crop, it may be a good candidate
for mino crop registration whether it is the result of geneticallyengineering or not. Thus, the
logic of abel expansion for minor crops applies to all herbicides,notjust those that would be
effective with a genetically altered cultivar.
the other hand, some industry analysts keep suggestingthat the market size for minor
crops is mall and may not justify registrationexpenseseven with the help of IR-4. There is a
large fin cial risk problem for manufacturerswith regard to minorcrops. With a vegetable crop
worth s eral thousand dollars an acre, the registrant takes an enormousrisk if that crop is
damage in order to sell $10 worth of herbicides per acre. It is not the same with corn or
soybean where the crop is worth only hundreds of dollars an acre. Thisfinancial risk problem is
a conce whether it is for an herbicideregistrationbased on non-transformedcultivars or an
herbici registration that depends on geneticallyengineeredtolerance.
References
=~~~_~~~" Stephen O. Duke, ed., CRC Press, Inc., 1996.
Nagata, RT., et al., "Correlation of Laboratory,Greenhouse and Field Response of Glyphosate
Resis t Transgenic Lettuce:' ProceedingsSouthernWeed ScienceSociety, Volume 48, 1995.