Recently, the Pesticide Application Technology Research Group from IPP-CAAS published a paper entitled “Water-soluble Food Dye of Allura Red as a Tracer to Determine the Spray Deposition of Pesticide on Target Crops” on Pest Management Science.

In this paper, an environmentally friendly and rapid method for determination of pesticide utilization rate was established, by applying water-soluble dye Allura Red as the tracer to simulate a pesticide, and simply using water as the extraction solvent in the extraction process of  the target crop.

Since 2007, Pesticide Application Technology Research Group has been committed to the determination of pesticide utilization rate methods, measuring and comparing the performance, advantages and disadvantages of different tracers. According to research results, Allura Red was chosen as the best tracer for determining pesticide deposition utilization rate. Allura Red has the following advantages: (1) Pesticide alternatives: Allura Red and pesticides showed comparable deposition under the same application conditions with ratios from 0.98 to 1.21; (2) Stability: the degradation rates of Allura Red were 0.34%, 3.32%, and 4.53% at pH 4, 7, and 9, respectively, indicating that Allura Red is relatively hydrolytically stable. The photolytic rate constant (k) is 0.006 h−1, and the photolysis half-life (t1/2) of Allura Red is 116 h, which clearly demonstrates that Allura Red is photostable under normal solar irradiation; (3) Accuracy and precision of the methods were found to be satisfactory with recoveries of 95.87% to 106.16% on filter paper or crops. In addition, as a food additive, Allura Red also has the advantages of low toxicity, moderate cost, and bright color that differentiates it from target crops.

This work was accomplished by IPP-CAAs, and the project was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program (2016YFD0200703).

More details can be found at the link below:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ps.5430

By Yan Xiaojing (yanxiaojing@caas.cn)