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High Praise for Sino-German Pesticide Project
A Sino-German Project looking at the management of pesticides has been praised by a high-ranking official and may be used as an example for good practice in international cooperation.
Vice-Minister of Agriculture Liu Jian sang the praises of the technical cooperation project November 13 and said its experience should be passed on to other bilateral scheme.
It was one of several bilateral projects signed in 1993 between the two countries and was conducted by the Institute for the Control of Agrochemicals of Ministry of Agriculture and German Development Cooperation.
During the project's second phase (1998-2001), pesticide inspection systems were established in China's six provinces -- Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Hunan, Hubei and Zhejiang, according to Yang Yongzhen, deputy director of the institute.
The first phase mainly focused on building the institute and two local institutes in Jiangsu and Sichuan as well as drafting legislation for the Pesticide Management Regulation, a rule issued by the State Council in 1997.
And the second phase focused on actually monitoring how much pesticide is left in certain agricultural products, soil and water.
In April, staff at the institute created an ultra-quick method of detecting pesticides in fruit and vegetables. The result takes less than one hour and costs less than three yuan.
Twelve sets of fast-detecting equipment have been bought for the six provinces and will be put in local vegetable wholesale market and vegetable production bases in December.
A pesticide management information system, including an Internet web page and an "Internet" connecting the institute with local agrochemical control bodies in the six provinces was also established during the second phase.
More than 40 researchers from China have been sent to countries including Germany, Switzerland and Singapore for training. More than 600 people have been trained in China by foreign experts since the project began in 1995.
The German government invested more than six million US dollars in the project, sources said.
With the help of the project, the institute also established official contact with the Environment Protection Agency in the United States and the Federal Biological Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry in Germany, the two leading institutions for pesticide management.
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