Ever needed just to quickly look up a rate for a particular pesticide, or see if it’s compatible with your bio program, only to get lost on Google or get frustrated by the numerous tables in Pub 370? Well, me too.
Read on for resources to make accessing pesticide information quicker and easier for Ontario’s floriculture sector.
These include a new mobile app for ALL registered pesticides, as well as a downloadable spreadsheet you can tailor to your needs.
1. NEW Downloadable Insecticide Spreadsheet
Although OMAFRA`s Floriculture Production Guide has lots of great info, let`s face it: it`s a bit clunky if you need to quickly reference something.
So, as an early Christmas present to all of you, I’ve made things easier by amalgamating all the information on registered pesticides from Tables 10.1 and 10.2 into one downloadable spreadsheet for quick reference, available here: registered-insecticides-2016_omafra_2-0
Because this table DOES NOT REPLACE THE LEGAL LABEL, it contains hyperlinks to the most recent label available for all products on the PMRA website (just make sure to click the product NUMBER, not the name).
I’ve also included information on known phytotoxicity, as well as compatibility with biological control agents from the Koppert, Biobest and BioWorks sites. In both cases, scroll over the cells with red tabs in the corner to reveal more detailed information.
The advantages of this table is twofold. First, I can update it more often – versions containing new pesticide registrations will be regularly posted on the blog and greenhouseipm.org (under the IPM tab). Second (and most importantly), this gives YOU – the growers – a place to easily make notes on things like efficacy with regards to YOUR particular crop, YOUR greenhouse conditions, and YOUR pest populations.
For those of you that picked up an advanced copy of this spreadsheet at the Canadian Greenhouse Conference, note that this new version has two changes:
- All references to Thionex (endosulfan) were removed (as of December 31 2016, it will be illegal to apply this product to any crop),
- A column has been added which details the insect stage affected.
I’m currently working on another tab of the spreadsheet for Fungicides, but don’t expect that to be ready for a few months. Special thanks to Mark Jandricic (technician, Buitenhuis Lab, VRIC) for his spreadsheet- wizard help with this project.
2. “Pesticide Labels” Mobile Phone App from Health Canada
Another way to quickly look up labels on your smart phone, and also save them as PDFs for quick reference later, is with the “Pesticide Labels” App from Health Canada.
Launched in September, it allows you to look up products by trade name or active ingredient. It’s available from Google Play, The Apple Store and Amazon Apps.
Unfortunately, the Health Canada app doesn’t contain any information on compatibility of pesticides with natural enemies. But there are a bunch of other apps than can help with this. Some of these include the Agrobio Side Effects Guide App, the Biobest Side Effects Manual App, The BioLine App, and the Koppert Side Effects App . With some of these apps, once its downloaded, you can reference the database while you are offline, as well.
Hopefully some of these tool, alone or in combination, will help make your pesticide decisions easier.
Not Shure on how to download it
Hi Frank – when you click on it, it should automatically download. You’ll then have to save it as a file on your computer. Alternatively, it should be in your “downloads” folder on your computer, and you can just drag it to your desktop or wherever in Windows Explorer. Let me know if you still have problems and I can email you a copy or mail you a flash drive with it on it.
Thank you for this great tool.
Great work Sarah! Thank-you very much.