While pesticides are invaluable tools for food and fiber production, pesticide use presents risks that must be carefully managed. Much progress has been made to reduce pesticide risks, including many new reduced-risk products and proven mitigation strategies. Ready access to this information will help reduce adverse impacts and improve environmental stewardship. PRiME-beta is designed to evaluate pesticide risks and risk reduction strategies using the best available science in an easy-to-use format. PRiME will help growers and crop advisors make more informed choices on practices and products that will reduce the environmental impact of high risk pesticide applications.

The current beta version of PRiME, however, is for test purposes only. In the coming months, our project team will add more risk indices and refine PRiME’s data sources and risk calculations. Consequently, risk rankings are subject to change. Users should not make changes in pest management practices based on the current (beta) version of PRiME. Please review our license agreement for complete terms of use.

A Charter Membership provides full access for one year for a low introductory investment of $24.95. Your Charter account allows you to store information about your sites and pesticide applications and upload electronic spray records, ensuring that PRiME serves you as efficiently as possible. Guest resources are available at no charge. Guests may use all PRiME-beta features except for data storage and spray record upload. Guests will need to reenter site and application information each time they access PRiME.

Charter members have a unique opportunity to join USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Unilever, US EPA Regions V and IX, General Mills and others in supporting the development of PRiME. A Charter Membership provides full access for one year for a low introductory investment of $24.95. Your charter account allows you to store information about your sites and pesticide applications and upload electronic spray records, ensuring that PRiME-beta serves you as efficiently as possible. As a Charter Member, you will also qualify for an exclusive discount on a subscription to PRiME’s full version.

Yes. PRiME-beta’s current database includes thousands of pesticide products registered in the U.S. for use on apples, grapes, potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries and green beans, but you can use PRiME-beta on other crops as well. Although some products may not currently be in our database, there is often significant overlap in products registered for similar cropping systems, and our project team continues to add products for additional crops on an ongoing basis. Early versions of PRiME will be best suited for specialty crops, with products for commodity crops, such as corn and soybeans, added later this year. Also, PRiME-beta is not ideally suited for “wet” crops such as cranberries and rice, given their unique growing environment. We will develop PRiME for “wet” crops in 2011.

PRiME-beta has been designed as a tool that allows a user to rank pesticide options in relation to each other and assess the effectiveness of various methods for reducing pesticide risk. For some of the indices, field results have been used to calibrate the risk scores against actual ecological damage, but the index scores are not absolute measures of environmental harm. Instead, PRiME-beta shows the likelihood that a pesticide application will affect non-target organisms given the characteristics of your farm and methods of application. See our Guide to Interpreting Risk Index Scores for more information.

This number represents the probability of an undesirable effect or, in the case of chronic risk indices, the proportion of the breeding season where reproduction is inhibited. In the example below, the avian acute index shows a risk score of 0.2. For this index, the undesirable effect is the killing of birds in and around a crop field. Therefore, a score of 0.2 means that there is an estimated 20% chance that the pesticide application will kill birds; a score of 0.5, for example, would mean a 50% chance, and so on. See our Guide to Interpreting Risk Index Scores for a more detailed description of all of PRiME-beta’s risk indices.

PRiME-beta’s risk rating scale is divided into three categories: low, moderate and high risk. For a given index, a risk score in the yellow zone signifies low risk; a risk score in the amber zone signifies moderate risk, and a risk score in the red zone signifies high risk. In the example below, the VOC emission potential, inhalation, algae and fish indices are in the low risk zone; the small mammal, avian reproductive and avian acute indices are in the moderate risk zone, and the aquatic invertebrates and earthworm indices are in the high risk zone. We consider risk index scores below a 10% chance of an undesirable effect to be in the low risk category, where no further steps to reduce risk are needed. Realistically, 10% is within the margin of error for our risk models. Risk index scores between 10% and 50% fall into the moderate risk category where we recommend that you take steps to reduce (mitigate) the risk of that application. Risk index scores above a 50% chance of an undesirable effect fall into the high risk category, where risk mitigation is highly recommended. See our Guide to Interpreting Risk Index Scores for more information.

In some cases, PRiME-beta will not have enough data required to make a risk calculation for a given index. A risk index could fail to calculate because we are missing the necessary physical and chemical properties (e.g. foliar half-life) for the active ingredient or because we are missing the necessary toxicity values for the end point of concern. If a risk bar is present, or a number is given (e.g. 0.00, or <0.01), then a calculation was made. In cases where no calculation is made, a risk score may be replaced by a “pass code” or a warning. To learn more about missing data, see our Guide to Interpreting Risk Index Scores.

The cumulative risk assessment enables you to generate risk ratings for multiple simultaneous applications (for example, a tank mix) such that all products are factored into a single risk score for each index. Cumulative risk assessment can be used to evaluate all applications for a growing season, but the assessment does not take into account pesticide buildup over time. Along with the cumulative probability of an adverse effect, PRiME-beta will display the number of individual applications falling into each risk category. See our Guide to Interpreting Risk Index Scores for more information on how the read the cumulative risk output.

In the current (beta) version of PRiME, risk index scores are not combined into a single score. The problem with combining all risk indices into a single score is that decisions based on combined scores could potentially lead to unintended and harmful risk tradeoffs. For example, if you are comparing two applications and each has a single risk score of 50, one score might signify risk to algae, whereas the other signifies a risk to farm workers. A single risk score might lead one to believe that the risks of these two applications are identical when, in fact, they are not. An informed risk management decision requires that the user know which resources are at risk. We are currently evaluating methods of aggregation that will reduce the likelihood of masking potentially harmful risk tradeoffs.

Yes. PRiME-beta handles differences in application methods a couple different ways. The method of application will affect a pesticide’s movement to surface water. PRiME-beta models this movement to surface water taking into account how the pesticide is applied as well as its likelihood to runoff or stick to the soil and how long it lasts in the environment. PRiME-beta also uses Use Pattern Adjustment Factors (UPAFs) to adjust risk scores when an application method is known to reduce or increase likely exposure levels to a specific non-target organism.

PRiME-beta has two kinds of risk index, acute and chronic. While the acute risk indices are calibrated against field studies, the chronic indices are based on laboratory studies. To learn more about how risk indices are calculated, see our Guide to Interpreting Risk Index Scores.

The Inhalation index calculates risk for a person present, for a significant period of time, in an area adjacent to the field, including a residence, workshop, adjacent field, etc. To learn more about how risk indices are calculated, see our Guide to Interpreting Risk Index Scores.

Pesticide accumulation refers to the buildup of pesticides in the environment resulting from repeated applications; accumulation can occur in soil, groundwater, surface water, plants and animal tissues. Although this refinement is possible in future versions of PRiME, the current beta version treats each application as an independent event.

Our risk scores are generated using the best available science. PRiME’s development team includes qualified experts from academic research, scientific consulting firms, government agencies and non-profit organizations. PRiME-beta’s risk indices have undergone independent scientific reviews, and we continue to publish our work in peer reviewed, scientific journals and to seek input from a broad range of stakeholders.

Yes. PRiME-beta accepts spray records from an electronic spreadsheet such as Excel. This import feature allows you to upload multiple pesticide applications at once, rather than entering each application individually, saving you time and effort. Early versions of the import feature will require the data to be in a specified format, while later versions will connect directly to popular farm data management software.

No. It is the user’s responsibility to read and follow all label instructions. PRiME-beta will generate risk ratings based on the information entered by the user and will not detect when an incorrect rate has been entered. You are required by law to follow all label instructions regardless of PRiME risk outputs.

Yes. We use state of the art security measures to ensure that all sensitive information sent over the internet is protected. All user data is strictly confidential and will not be shared with any third parties. Please review our privacy statement for more information.

The current version of PRiME does not generate results for how well a pesticide application will work or the cost differences between application scenarios. Accurate data for efficacy and cost is difficult to come by and presently PRiME-beta does not generate results for these factors.

PRiME’s “Suggested Mitigation Strategies” feature is currently under development and will be launched in 2011. When risk level is moderate to high, PRiME will indicate the pathways of exposure (e.g. spray drift, runoff, etc.) and suggest appropriate measures for reducing that risk, including IPM and conservation practices. Users will be able to select hypothetical mitigation options and compare to previous risk ratings.