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The UAPASTF Consortium

The UAPASTF is a consortium of the 8 agricultural chemical companies listed below that formed a limited liability company (L.L.C.) task force in December 2021. These companies pooled technical and financial resources to focus on generating data for submission to pesticide regulatory authorities around the world to inform estimates for off-site movement, determine potential operator/handler exposure, and assess crop residue contribution to human dietary exposure in risk assessment and regulatory approval processes.  The UAPASTF was formed primarily to respond to the recommendations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Working Party on Pesticides (WPP) Drone / Unmanned Aerial Spray Systems (UASS) Subgroup (Drone Subgroup).  UAPASTF alignment with the work of the OECD WPP Drone Subgroup is critical to achieving the goals of the UAPASTF. 

The regulatory data generated by the UAPASTF are proprietary and may be used only for UAPASTF member companies and companies that have compensated UAPASTF for their reliance on the UAPASTF data. 

The registrant companies that are members of the UAPASTF LLC are:

  • BASF Corporation
  • Bayer CropScience LP
  • Corteva Agriscience LLC
  • FMC Corporation
  • Gowan Company LLC
  • NuFarm Americas, Inc.
  • Syngenta Crop Protection LLC
  • Valent U.S.A. LLC

The current leadership of the UAPASTF is: 

Administrative Committee Chair:   Greg Watson (Bayer CropScience)

Administrative Committee Vice-Chair:   Travis Bui (Corteva Agriscience)

Technical Committee Chair:   Frank Donaldson (BASF Corporation)

Technical Committee Vice-Chair:   Rajeev Sinha (Corteva Agriscience)

Below are links to work products of the UAPASTF that are intended to provide information that improves UAV-based pesticide application and research.  These reference documents/UAPASTF work products are non-proprietary and for public use without restriction.

The UAPASTF believes that UAV-based pesticide application is an important part of the progression toward precision application/digital agriculture and has the potential to contribute to sustainability in agriculture and other settings where pest management is needed.  Since its formation in 2021, the UAPASTF has implemented an innovative Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) off-site field-testing program that we believe is the first of its kind in our industry; studies have been completed under varying environmental conditions and in multiple countries and regions (e.g., Australia, Brazil, Canada, Hungary, Spain, and the U.S.) using the same GLP protocols and contract research organization. From this significant investment in regulatory GLP field data generation, the UAPASTF is moving forward to support the effort to develop UAV fit-for-purpose off-site exposure estimates and models that will be used globally in risk assessments and regulatory approvals. The UAPASTF has also developed a ‘best management practices’ (BMP) document to inform UAV-based application of pesticides; the UAPASTF sought input from global stakeholders including UAV application and manufacturing companies, academic and government experts, and regulatory agencies in the creation of this BMP document. In the non-dietary/occupational (e.g., mixer/loader/applicator) exposure space, the UAPASTF has initiated an effort to develop a questionnaire to help elaborate ‘use steps’ in the performance of a UAV-based pesticide application.  Identification of ‘use steps’ (e.g., mixing, filing/refilling, applying) should enable an analysis of existing exposure datasets and their appropriateness for use in non-dietary exposure/risk assessments. The UAPASTF has worked with Agriculture and AgriFood Canada in collaboration with other stakeholders to support the development of a GLP field crop residue protocol and study that has evaluated different UAV models on multiple representative crops (e.g., row, vegetable, orchard, and vine) in comparison to ground application methods.  Bayer CropScience provided the GLP test material for this study and is conducting the analytical phase of this study. For more background on the science that led to the formation of the UAPASTF, see the following references:


  • A.S. Bonds, N. Pai, S. Hovinga, K. Stump, R. Haynie. S. Flack. T. Bui.  Spray Drift, Operator Exposure, Crop Residue and Efficacy:  Early Indications for Equivalency of Uncrewed Aerial Spray Systems with Conventional Application Techniques.  Journal of the ASABE (doi: 10.13031/ja.15646)
 
  • Christian J Kuster, Maxie Kohler, Sarah Hovinga, Christian Timmermann, Georg Hamacher, Kathrin Buerling, Lirong Chen, Nicola J. Hewitt, and Thomas Anft. Pesticide Exposure of Operators from Drone Application: A Field Study with Comparative Analysis to Handheld Data from Exposure Models. ACS Agricultural Science & Technology 2023 3 (12), 1125-1130, DOI: 10.1021/acsagscitech.3c00253