Summary of the 2019 Minor Use Workshops

CHC’s Crop Protection Manager, Caleigh Hallink-Irwin attended the 2019 Minor Use Workshops in Gatineau, QC on March 19-21. Participants attended from across Canada, as well as from Brazil, Australia, and the United States.

The Pest Management Centre debuted its pilot program to build more flexibility into the minor use prioritization selection. The same total number of projects were still prioritized, but instead of the traditional 10 per discipline (pathology, entomology, weeds), 8 “A” priorities were picked per day with a maximum of 6 additional flex “B+” priorities. On the last day of the workshop, the “B+” priorities from all disciplines underwent a final round of selection in order to pick the final 6 “A” priorities for the year. This gives more flexibility for busy disciplines in any given year: pathology was a successful example, with 12 total “A” priorities this year.

In addition, a new “twinning” process was piloted this year, in which two projects per discipline were chosen to “twin” a conventional solution with a biopesticide solution, thereby increasing efficiency and putting forward 6 biopesticide projects.  Some doubts were expressed regarding this new “twinning” process, especially around crop/pest combinations that had no conventional solution to “twin” with, but we will have to wait for the PMC’s conclusions from the pilot project.

The projects chosen for 2019 were:

Pathology

Entomology

Weeds