News

Plague locust numbers in north-west Victoria are at their highest in 15 years, with farmers worried that recent egg laying could trigger damaging spring swarms.

Indonesia is expanding food safety monitoring for fresh produce, with mobile labs and tighter inter-agency oversight aimed at pesticide residues that exceed allowed thresholds.

Farmers in Western Australia report thousands of mice per hectare, reseeding losses and sharply higher baiting costs on top of rising diesel and fertilizer bills.

Australia’s chemical regulator has approved an emergency permit for stronger zinc phosphide mouse bait in grain paddocks. The move follows severe mouse pressure in Western Australia and South Australia, where growers report seed losses, crop damage and mounting costs in rural communities.

Authorities in Kano state are calling for urgent containment measures as Tuta absoluta spreads across major tomato zones and threatens both harvests and market supply.

A severe mouse plague in Western Australia is hitting grain-growing districts north-east of Perth, raising crop protection costs and intensifying pressure on rural communities.

On International Day of Plant Health, ICRISAT outlined an integrated strategy for grain legumes built on resistant genetics, biological control and real-time farmer advisories.

Authorities in South Australia say a major locust outbreak is unlikely this season, but monitoring continues across key farming regions after April swarms.

India is preparing a nationwide ban on paraquat dichloride after an expert panel linked the herbicide to severe poisoning risks and major public-health concerns.

EFSA says pesticide-limit breaches are becoming more frequent in some widely consumed foods even though about 99 percent of samples still comply overall.

Campaigners are urging the UK government to ban pre-harvest glyphosate spraying while regulators review the chemical’s approval through December 2026.

The Roundup case before the US Supreme Court could decide whether states may require cancer warnings beyond federally approved pesticide labels.

French startup Agriodor has raised €15 million to expand its olfactory biocontrol platform, including a sugar beet product that reduced green aphid pressure in field trials.

A new US policy push for glyphosate production has intensified political attacks on the herbicide, but FactCheck.org says the scientific evidence remains mixed and regulators still do not treat carcinogenicity as settled.

A March 18, 2026 PLOS ONE paper reports a full food and feed safety assessment of Vip3Cb1, a Vip3C insecticidal protein for crop protection, with no detected hazard signal in bioinformatics, digestion, heat-lability and acute oral toxicity endpoints.

A field study found that residues from a fluopyram-trifloxystrobin premix in cucumber fell below the 0.01 mg/kg quantification limit within 10 to 15 days after the final spray, while calculated dietary risk remained negligible under good agricultural practice.