CropLife India seeks 5-year data protection, warns of narrowing options

Industry group CropLife India called on the government to include a five-year regulatory data protection provision in the draft Pesticides Management Bill, warning that restricting existing crop protection products without introducing viable alternatives would further narrow the options available to farmers. Indian farmers currently have access to about 380 crop protection active ingredients, compared with roughly 1,200 available globally, according to CropLife India.

Under the proposal, a company would receive five years of exclusive rights to the safety, efficacy and residue data it generates to register a new product, after which the molecule would open to the rest of the industry, including generic manufacturers. CropLife India said the current framework, still anchored in the Insecticides Act of 1968, offers no such protection, discouraging companies from bringing newer, lower-dose chemistries into India and leaving farmers reliant on older, less-targeted molecules.

Rahul Dhanuka, managing director of Dhanuka Agritech, said climate change and patterns such as El Niño are making pest pressure more volatile and said India needs a framework that allows “better science, innovation and technology backed products” to reach the market. CropLife India, whose members include Crystal Crop Protection, which acquired FMC’s India crop protection business for $252 million in May, said decisions to restrict existing molecules should rest on established safety and efficacy data rather than precaution alone.

Source: Global Agriculture