Registration Committee moves ahead on guidelines for pesticide drone application
25 October 2021, New Delhi: The Registration Committee on Agrochemicals decided to approve the Guidelines for Registration requirements of Pesticides for Drone application.
The decision on the guidelines was taken in the last CIB & RC meeting. This is a big step taken by the regulatory authority and is set to benefit both the Startups in the Agriculture Drone segment and the agrochemical companies who have been pushing for introduction of policy for the Agrochemical segment.
The applicant may apply for seeking registration for drone-based application of pesticides and the endorsement (label expansion) related approvals under the relevant provisions/category to the secretariat of the CIB&RC
For various categories of applications, the RC recommended the following requirements:-
A. Products with existing label claim in a crop recommended for spray with conventional sprayers and to endorse the use of Drones as alternate/additional spraying equipment.
Requirement:
a) If critical Good Agriculture Practices (GAP) e.g. AI dose/ha, Pre harvest Interval (PHI) and number of applications is within a recommended range of conventional spray then; Data on phyto-toxicity on the approved crop-pest combination for one season four different agro-climatic conditions, where the target crop is cultivated, to be generated as per protocol (given at Annexure) and also in the Spray Monitoring Form (given at Appendix) from the Institutes approved by the RC.
b) If critical GAP e.g. AI dose/ha, PHI and number of applications is not within a recommended range of conventional spray then; Data on bio-efficacy, phyto-toxicity and residue may be generated as per approved guidelines alongwith protocol (given at Annexure) and details shall also be submitted in the Spray Monitoring Form (given at Appendix) from the Institutes approved by the RC.
No data requirement for chemistry/ Toxicology/Packaging/ Legal.
B. New product / Insecticide / new endorsement (label expansion) registration with use of conventional sprayers or Drones as spraying equipment or use of both as spraying equipment.
Requirement:
Data requirement on bio-efficacy, chemistry, toxicity, packaging and legal as per approved guidelines under respective category alongwith protocol (given at Annexure) and details shall also be submitted in the Spray Monitoring Form (given at Appendix) from the Institutes approved by the RC.
RC further decided that, each applicant wish to generate data for seeking registration for drone-based application of pesticides and their endorsement (label expansion) shall intimate about proposed data generation to the Sectt. of CIB&RC in advance.
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