number of Centers is going to expand in FY 2003. The draft FY 2003 budget must be
developed by the end of March 2001.
After lunch the Centers Directors met with the IR-4 Project Management Committee.
Harold Coble provided a brief history of the Pest Management Centers to the IR-4 group.
Bob Holm discussed current IR-4 activities and priorities. Areas of cooperation and
collaboration were discussed. These included having IR-4 representatives on Pest
Management Center steering and advisory committees, making sure clientele are aware
of opportunities to have the IR-4 program assist with pesticide clearances and Section 18
support, bringing identified pest management priorities to IR-4’s attention via the Food
Use Workshop and through Project Clearance Requests, and writing articles for the IR-4
newsletter.
Following the meeting with IR-4, the group met with the Denise Keehner, the new
Director of USEPA/BEAD and staff Neil Anderson and Kathleen Depukat. BEAD’s data
needs were discussed. Quality and confidence of data are very important. They were
very complimentary of the crop profiles. The profiles help to answer EPA’s internal
questions, the impact of possible mitigation scenarios and how materials are used.
Profiles are the starting point for their chemical reviews.
The second day of our meeting started with a presentation by Norm Bennett, NASS.
NASS has been collecting pesticide use data since the early 90’s. Currently NASS is
going through reorganization. NASS is committed to providing pesticide use information
on field crops every year and fruit and vegetables every other year. The NASS budget
has not been cut, but their collaborators did not provide the normal support. NASS will
continue to collect field crop information, but the number of states in the survey will drop
from fifteen to seven or eight during this cycle. NASS will probably need to start
rotating their field crop surveys to every other year rather than annually. Information
regarding the changes in NASS should be available within the next couple of months.
There are no planned changes in the Vegetable survey timelines. NASS will be
collecting additional pest management information during their survey process for the
coming year. Norm suggested getting together with Ron Stinner to discuss a possibility
of providing NASS data on the new PMC Web site.
Ron Stinner made a presentation about the new National Pest Management Center web
site. All of the key databases which are a part of web site are up and running. Ron went
over the responsibilities of the staff who are working on this project.
Steve Toth – Crop Profiles/PMSPs
Eva Zurck – overall design & structure
Peg Rostein – Pesticide Data/Expertise
Jeanne Bacheler – Crop Profiles/Expertise
Youchang Li – Pest/Crop Matrix
Ron Stinner – Management & Programming
The databases, which are included currently on this website are:
Crop profiles/PMSPs/Crop x Pest Matrix
Pesticide
RAPIS_PC
PUD
EPA
David Pike’s database
Resistance Management
Pat Bills (MSU)
IRM Training Insecticide Resistance Management Training
Expertise
The support funds previously slotted for PMIDSS will be transferred to the Centers
Project as of July 2001.
Each center needs to develop what they want with their regional web site. What
documents and type of documents will serve the region? What are the databases and on-
line forms needed? What should the templates look like?
Linda and Rick will come up with a draft for a standardized electronic reporting system
that could be used by each region. This report needs to include an acknowledgement
statement at the bottom.
There was a detailed discussion concerning minimum standards for web sites that are
funded under the Center grants. It was requested that any old state PIAP web sites
change their names to Pest Management Center. This topic was tabled for the next
meeting. Susan Ratcliffe will send to the Centers the U of I guidelines for their web sites
as an example for us to review prior to our next meeting.
Wilfred Burr discussed the current status of crop profiles and stated that there will soon
be 400 of them on the web site. He asked that we continue to encourage the development
of crop profiles. Stored grain is a critical area lacking a crop profile. He also stated that
they would like to see more regional crop profiles being completed. Wilfred suggested
that occupational risk assessment issues be incorporated into new crop profiles. New crop
profiles should include a list of key words so they can be searchable on the national web
site.
Therese Murtagh also mentioned that the crop profiles lack information on occupational
exposure issues and risk mitigation. She would like a framework developed for
incorporating this information into the profiles.
There was a lot of discussion about the concerns expressed by several IPM coordinators.
The feeling is most agree that there are a lot good reasons for PMCs. The IPM and PIAP
partnership is at the core of what we are trying to do. All regional IPM meetings are
scheduled during March and April and it is important that PMC personnel continue to
participate in these meetings. There is a real fear among IPM that their formula dollars