Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Minor use is the use of chemical pesticides or non-chemical means of crop protection where the potential use is on a scale not sufficiently large to justify registration of that use from an applicant’s perspective alone. The key driver for minor uses is a lack of economic return to an applicant from registration of those uses, in particular the associated costs of generating the data required for obtaining and maintaining regulatory approval and potential liability from those uses once approved. Typically, minor uses involve crops grown on a small scale (minor crops) and often are high value speciality crops. Additionally, minor uses can involve uses within major crops in terms of controlling minor pests and diseases. This results in a situation where speciality crop industries are either without or are lacking sufficient access to pesticides to adequately protect those crops. This guidance has been developed to provide a document that centralises the variety of existing information and global approaches for facilitating the registration of minor uses. It is not intended to reproduce existing information, but rather briefly discuss and collate in a single document the sources of information utilised to address and solve minor use gaps.
