This is to provide an economic incentive to registrants by giving the companies greater time to recoup their registration costs, thereby encouraging more label claims for new generation sprays. It also means that when needed to manage a new pest or disease, there will more likely be ready access to the right chemicals to combat it.

HortNZ and its Product Groups said that they supported extending the data protection period to be the same as for our trading partners, providing that growers benefited. The other key point made in the submission was that data protection should also apply when similar crops are grouped together so that the approval of a chemical for one crop in that group would apply to the whole group. For example, an approval for potatoes applying to the root and tuber group.

HortNZ acknowledges Market Solutionz for its work on developing the submission.