One of Growcom’s most useful services to agriculture is its comprehensive online database of Australian registered chemicals, permits and labels which is currently offered free to all agricultural producers and other stakeholders across Australia.

It suggests that Infopest online (www.infopest.com.au) should be a grower’s first port of call when it comes to finding out what can be sprayed on crops or around buildings, fences and other farm infrastructure. The site lists the labels and off-label permits for all registered chemical products relevant to a particular crop and pest problems.

Infopest remains free to users thanks to the generous contribution of sponsors, Crop Care, WFI, Agsafe and, most recently, GrowData Developments, a privately owned Australian company which specialises in management software for the horticultural industry.

The number of registered Infopest users has grown this year to nearly 4000. Janine Clark, Growcom’s Manager, Chemical Access, is determined to double that figure in 2016.

The dedicated Infopest team says it is proud of the quality of the data stored. It accesses registration and permit approvals directly from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) and cross-checks the entries in the database to ensure all are accurate and up-to-date. Maximum residue limits (MRLs) are also recorded and regularly updated to keep pace with APVMA, FSANZ and CODEX records. To assist with international market access, the MRLs can be used to determine acceptable residue values.

In this role, the team also provides a valuable role in quality assurance for the regulators.

The APVMA approves labels that look very different to those seen on a drum or pesticide container in a store. For this reason, Infopest also collects the marketed product labels (MPL) for as many products as possible.

When viewing the relevant label particulars (RLP), growers can also click on the ‘view MPL’ link to see what the label looks like when buying the product in the store.

Obtaining and maintaining on farm accreditation and assurance certification is an important part of market access requirements. Keeping records of labels and Safety Data Sheets (SDS) to assist with auditing and to minimise risk with spills or exposure is made easier with Infopest. A quick product search will give you the latest label and Safety Data Sheet (SDS) in a digital form, which can be printed off to be filed or copied and saved, electronically.

Because its search engine recognises similar words, users need not worry about misspelling a complicated chemical name. Whether one searches for sulphur or sulfur, roundup or Round Up, the site’s intuitive search function will suggest a range of possible results with a percentage match on each.

If growers are not sure how to use Infopest, there are support staff available who are happy to take a query by phone or e-mail to guide customers through the process. There is also have a ‘Help’ site which offers some tutorials on basic searches to get things started. Once a search has been conducted and results found, the data can be exported to Excel, making further manipulation of the data tables possible.

Infopest works best on a larger screen, but can also be accessed via smart phones and tablets.