The summerfruit residue monitoring scheme is an important part of supplying fruit to export markets that meets the individual importing countries residue requirements. Another part of the assurance is the submission of completed spray diaries.
Exporter, packhouse and grower expectations and responsibilities on both topics are covered in the industry Quality Manuals available on the Summerfruit NZ portal.
Should our industry not meet our requirements for the number of tests completed, we could be found to be in breach of our statutory requirements.
This season, we have planned for 54 samples to be taken and the growers selected have been contacted by AsureQuality. At this point in the season only 11 of the planned 54 have been received, and while there is some time to go in the cherry season, the end is not that far away.
If you have yet to provide requested samples, please do so as soon as possible. If there are any problems, especially should you be unable to send a sample, please contact me, Richard Mills immediately.
Local market residue data
I am aware there is a GlobalGAP requirement for samples of local market destined fruit to also be residue tested. If you are willing to share the results of your testing, it would help build a resilient picture of the New Zealand market scenario.
Any tests received will only be used in an anonymised and aggregated manner. This information would help answer queries that we receive periodically from Government bodies regarding the summerfruit industry’s use of agrichemicals.
Should you require assistance in interpreting any results, please be in touch. While the information is available on the portal it is not necessarily that easy to sort through.
One of the issues that we face increasingly as an industry is a lack of data, and residue results for local market fruit is part of the data that in an ideal world would be collected.
Richard Mills
richard.mills@summerfruitnz.co.nz
021 632 559