Ethoxyquin Trouble

Ethoxyquin Trouble. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

At the recent Hort convention Mike Willett with the NW Hort Council talked about some regulatory issues including ethoxyquin which for the tree fruit industry is used as a pesticide.

WILLETT: The European Union has already taken action that sometime towards the mid to late part of 2013 their MRL’s going to go, likely to .05 although we haven’t seen the announcement. Right now through this shipping season we don’t think there’s going to be any problems with ethoxyquin residues. But I think people need to start thinking about alternatives.

Willett asks the question whether you can detect ethoxyquin at these particular levels.

WILLETT: Ethoxyquin is a very unstable molecule when you expose it to light and it disappears very quickly and so we’re working with analytical labs trying to determine what methodology they’re using, what’s their limit of detection or quantification and what’s the likelihood even if you treat pears and hold them for a long period of time with ethoxyquin whether or not there’s going to be detectable residues. And I don’t think we know the answer to that yet.

He says they hope to be able to have some answers by springtime for pear growers.

WILLETT: We’re trying to sort that out. We’re going to provide guidance to the pear industry and provide some broader guidance about how this is all going to work. As soon as we get an official notification that this change has been made, we’ll make sure people know.

We’ll have more with Mike on this issue tomorrow.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.