This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, first published online on 11 January 2016. The version of record [Kathleen A Lewis, John Tzilivakis, Doublas J. Warner & Andrew Green, ???An international database for pesticide risk assessments and management???, Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, Vol 22(4): 1050-1064 ] is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10807039.2015.1133242Despite a changing world in terms of data sharing, availability, and transparency there are still major resource issues associated with collating datasets that will satisfy the requirements of comprehensive pesticide risk assessments especially those undertaken at regional or national scale. In 1996 a long-term project was initiated to begin collating and formatting pesticide data to eventually create a free-to-all repository of data which would provide a comprehensive transparent, harmonised and managed extensive dataset for all types of pesticide risk assessments. Over the last 20 years this database has been keeping pace with improving risk assessments, their associated data requirements, and the needs and expectations of database end users. In 2007 the Pesticides Properties DataBase (PPDB) was launched as a free-to-access website. Currently, the PPDB holds data for almost 2300 pesticide active substances and over 700 metabolites. For each substance around 300 parameters are stored covering human health, environmental quality and biodiversity risk assessments. Approaching the twentieth anniversary of the database this paper seeks to elucidate the current data model, data sources, its validation and quality control processes and describes a number of existing risk assessment applications that depend upon it

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Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0308521X Copyright Elsevier Ltd. DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2004.07.015 [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]Reducing the energy derived from fossil fuels within agricultural systems has important implications for decreasing atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases, thus assisting the arrest of global warming. The identification of crop production methods that maximise energy efficiency and minimise greenhouse gas emissions is vital. Sugar beet is grown in a variety of locations and under a variety of agronomic conditions within the UK. This study identified thirteen production scenarios, representative of over 90% of the UK beet crop, which included five soil types, nine fertiliser regimes and nine crop protection strategies. The fossil energy input, the overall energy efficiency and the global warming potential (GWP) of each production scenario was assessed. This study did not consider the processing of the beet to extract sugar. The overall energy input of the UK beet crop ranges between 15.72 and 25.94 GJ/ha. It produces between 7.3 and 15.0 times as much energy in dry matter at the sugar factory gate as consumed in its production, with an average ratio of 9.7. It has an average GWP of 0.024 eq. t CO2 per tonne of clean beet harvested, equivalent to 0.0062 eq. t CO2 per GJ output. The energy input into each scenario was dictated largely by the energy associated with crop nutrition. The smallest energy inputs per hectare were to crops grown under organic conditions or conventional crops grown on fertile soils (clay loam, silt or peat) or sand soil with broiler manure applied. Those crops with the greatest energy input were grown on sand soil that was irrigated and had mineral fertiliser applied. Although the organic scenario grown on sandy loam soil had one of the smallest energy inputs per hectare, the low yield meant that the energy input was similar per tonne of beet harvested to the conventional crops grown on sandy loam soil. The extra distance travelled by organic beet from the farm to the factory increased the energy input per tonne above that of the conventional scenarios. The GWP was smallest for the conventional crops on the fertile peat and silt soils and greatest on the irrigated sand soils and the sandy loam soils. The organic scenario had a similar GWP to the conventional scenarios on sandy loam to the farm gate, although the greater diesel requirement for transport increased the GWP overall. The GWP per GJ of output for sugar beet in England is similar to published values for wheat

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?? 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Ecological focus areas are one of three greening measures that were introduced into the European Common Agricultural Policy by the reform in 2014, with the aim of enhancing the ecological function of agricultural landscapes. However, there are concerns that they will provide little or no additional ecological benefit (enhanced biodiversity and ecosystem services) as those that are declared may already exist and/or any new areas will be implemented on the basis of farm management burdens rather than ecological criteria, such as those which are the easiest or least costly to implement. To implement ecological focus areas to achieve greater benefits requires taking account of numerous spatial and management parameters, scientific understanding of ecosystem services, and the needs and behaviour individual and communities of species. Such an approach is not readily practical or feasible for many farm and land managers. This paper describes the development of an indicator framework which aims to distil this complex scientific information to aid decision making with regard to the implementation of ecological focus areas to enhance and increase benefits for ecosystem services and biodiversity. It involved collating scientific evidence from over 350 papers, reports and guides and then structuring this evidence to form the indicator framework. 230 impacts were identified for 20 land uses and landscape features, and these are characterised using 138 parameters and attributes, containing 708 descriptive classes. The framework aims to help land managers identify the potential benefits and burdens of different options for the specific spatial and management context of their farm, and thus select those with greatest benefits and least burden for their circumstances. Ecological focus areas are part of the first evolution of greening measures, so there is scope to improve them to make their implementation more ecological and more focused. Tools, such as the indicator framework presented herein, have the potential to support this process by educating and raising awareness of potential impacts, facilitating the transfer of scientific knowledge, and resulting in a more ecological aware industry

Data relating to the rate at which pesticide active substances dissipate on or within various plant matrices are important for a range of different risk assessments; however, despite the importance of this data, dissipation rates are not included in the most common online data resources. Databases have been collated in the past, but these tend not to be maintained or regularly updated. The purpose of the exercise described herein was to collate a new database in a format compatible with the main online pesticide database resource (the Pesticide Properties Database, PPDB), to validate this database in line with the Pesticide Properties Database protocols and thus ensure that the data is maintained and updated in future. Data was collated using a systematic review approach using several scientific databases. Collated literature was subjected to a quality assessment, and then data was extracted into an MS Excel spreadsheet. The outcome of the study is a database based on data collated from 1390 published articles covering over 400 pesticides and over 200 crops across a wide variety of different matrices (leaves, fruits, seeds etc.) for pesticide residues on the crop surface, as well as residues absorbed within the plant material. This data is now fully incorporated into the PPDB.Data Set: available as a supplementary file: "Plant dissipation data August 2017.xlxs". Data Set License:This data set was made available under a CC-BY license.Keywords: pesticide dissipation; risk assessment; environmental fate SummaryData relating to the rate at which pesticide active substances dissipate or decay on or within various plant matrices (e.g., leaves, stems, seeds, fruits) are important for a range of different risk assessments. For example, dissipation rates can be used to determine when workers can safely reenter fields and glasshouses following a pesticide application [1], and may also be used to estimate the potential exposure of individuals who may come in contact with, for example, sprayed sports turf or golf greens [2,3]. Dissipation rates also have application in consumer safety. For example, these values are used in calculations for predicting residue concentrations in harvested produce and for determining the time interval needed between crop spraying and harvesting or potential processing/consumption in order to minimise residue concentrations [4,5]. Dissipation rates also have value when considering the potential risk to non-target and beneficial organisms (e.g., pollinators) that may forage or otherwise come in contact with a pesticide treated plant, as well as informing on how long the chemical is likely to offer satisfactory pest control before it decays [6][7][8]. As a consequence, plant matrix half-lives are often an important input parameter into various risk assessment models [9][10][11][12].In this context, dissipation rate is defined as the rate at which the pesticide active substance disappears from the part of the plant measured due to the combined effects of different processes Preprints (www...

Data relating to the rate at which pesticide active substances dissipate on or within various plant matrices are important for a range of different risk assessments; however, despite the importance of this data, dissipation rates are not included in the most common online data resources. Databases have been collated in the past, but these tend not to be maintained or regularly updated. The purpose of the exercise described herein was to collate a new database in a format compatible with the main online pesticide database resource (the Pesticide Properties Database, PPDB), to validate this database in line with the Pesticide Properties Database protocols and thus ensure that the data is maintained and updated in future. Data was collated using a systematic review approach using several scientific databases. Collated literature was subjected to a quality assessment, and then data was extracted into an MS Excel spreadsheet. The outcome of the study is a database based on data collated from 1390 published articles covering over 400 pesticides and over 200 crops across a wide variety of different matrices (leaves, fruits, seeds etc.) for pesticide residues on the crop surface, as well as residues absorbed within the plant material. This data is now fully incorporated into the PPDB.

A new risk assessment system for pesticides has been developed for use by a wide variety of end-users from agronomists to farmers. This system replaces the old, predominately hazard-based approach that was originally used by the UK's EMA software package. The approach adopted is consistent with current regulatory assessments but adjustments are made to reflect the local conditions and the environmental costs and benefits of varying management practices. This paper presents an overview of the software and provides examples of its use and evaluation via case studies. The first of the case studies examines how the approach compares with the original EMA methodology and a variety of other indicators that were compared during the EU CAPER project. Other case studies apply the new system to assess whether differences in risk can be identified between different farm management systems-conventional agriculture and Integrated Crop Management. pesticide / environmental risk assessment / crop protection / integrated crop management / software Résumé-Présentation et application d'un système de logiciel mis au point pour évaluer le risque environnemental des pesticides agricoles. Un nouveau système d'évaluation des risques pour les produit phytosanitaires a été développé à l'usage d'une grande variété d'utilisateurs allant de l'agronome aux agriculteurs. Ce système remplace la vieille approche qui était principalement basée sur l'évaluation des risques et qui à l'origine était utilisée par le logiciel EMA développé au Royaume-Uni. L'approche adoptée est conforme aux évaluations des réglementations courantes mais des ajustements sont faits pour refléter les conditions locales ainsi que les coûts et les avantages environnementaux de différentes méthodes de gestion des cultures. Cet article présente une vue d'ensemble du logiciel et fournit des exemples de son utilisation et de son évaluation par l'intermédiaire d'études de cas. La première étude examine comment l'approche rivalise avec la méthodologie originelle d'EMA et une variété d'indicateurs supplémentaires qui ont été comparés pendant le projet CAPER de l'Union Européenne. D'autres études de cas appliquent le nouveau système pour vérifier si des différences de risque peuvent être identifiées entre différents systèmes de gestion de ferme avec agriculture conventionnelle ou gestion intégrée des cultures. pesticide / évaluation des risques environnementale / protection de récolte / gestion intégrée de récolte / logiciel