ABSTRACT

Crop protection is critical for meeting future world food supply with fast growing population.  To overcome challenges in limited land and water availability for agriculture, the pace of technological innovation in crop protection is accelerating.  This seminar will briefly introduce the discovery and development process of crop protection products with a focus on exposure and risk assessment for human and environmental safety for product registration.

In North America, risk assessment is required for regulatory approval of agrochemicals.  It is a function of exposures and toxicity effects. Environmental modeling is often used to predict exposures of agrochemicals in different environmental media (soil, air, and water).  This talk will provide an overview of the regulatory models, and approaches for exposure and risk assessments.

BIO

Dr. Zhenxu (Jane) Tang is the Head of Environmental Exposure Modeling in the North American Environmental Safety group of Bayer Crop Science.  Her team interacts with scientists in the environmental fate, ecotoxicology, human safety, and regulatory groups and provides exposure assessment in the development of Bayer Crop Protection products.  She is also a Senior Bayer Science Fellow with 20+ years of experience in hydrological/water quality models and spray drift models, focusing on applications in exposure and risk assessment of agrochemicals, and integration with GIS techniques.  She has served in various technical leadership roles in the Crop Life America/Crop Life International technical committees.  Jane is very active in engaging multi-stakeholders in scientific and regulatory venues to promote science-based exposure and risk assessment in regulating crop protection products.  She has also made numerous peer-reviewed publications and presentations at scientific conferences.