Scenarios for exposure of aquatic organisms to plant protection products in the Netherlands: Part 2: Sideways and upward spraying in Dutch fruit crops (final report)

The current Dutch authorisation procedure for calculating the exposure of aquatic organisms to plant protection products needs to be revised. For this reason, Wageningen UR, RIVM and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency were asked to develop a new exposure assessment methodology for various crops and application methods. This report describes the methodology for upward and sideways spraying in Dutch fruit crops. In contrast to the current procedure, the new procedure calculates the exposure concentration based on a statistical distribution of the exposure concentration in all relevant Dutch watercourses. The methodology results in a so-called 90th percentile exposure concentration considering all watercourses alongside fields grown with fruit crops. The new methodology takes input of plant protection products by spray drift, drainage and atmospheric deposition into account. Agronomic practices in Dutch apple and pear orchards were considered representative for all (high) pome and stone fruit orchard crops in the Netherlands. An important part of the new methodology is the option to mitigate spray drift deposition by using drift-reducing technologies in a higher spray drift reducing class or by including a wider crop-free buffer zone.