Semi-field test - The future of ecotoxicology

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are the most important pollinators of the world's major agricultural crops despite often being exposed to environmental pollutants and toxic agents during their foraging.
Regulators around the world are paying increasing attention toward their impact on the environment and are assessing the risks of different pesticides on honey bees. The need for more ecological approaches, now recognized by the scientific community and highlighted by international regulatory authorities, is leading high tier studies to be the future of ecotoxicology.

Semi-field tests are a particular type of high tier tests aimed at analyzing the potential impact of pesticides, insecticides and other agricultural products, on bee colony development. These tests allow their efficacy and safety to be evaluated under more realistic conditions than classical laboratory studies.
One of the main advantages of these trials is to be able to simulate real field conditions, minimizing risks and costs associated with full-scale testing. This is mainly because semi-field testing involves the exposure of bees to specific treatments in an outdoor, controlled and confined environment.

At ChemService, we perform semi-field testing according to the OECD 75 guidelines and all the related biological sample analysis (honey, nectar and pollen). Particular attention is paid to monitoring and evaluating the condition of bee colonies.
During the tests are recorded several parameters such as flight activity in the crop, their behaviour and especially their mortality and reproduction in terms of eggs produced.

Although these analysis represent much more realistic conditions than laboratory tests, they also represent a challenge for our experts due to different climatic conditions such as proper plant growth, weather conditions and the health status of all bee colonies. All easily handled situations with the experience gained over the years.

In conclusion, semi field tests are a valuable and versatile approach in ecotoxicological risk assessment of plant protection products since they manage to offer a compromise between the controlled conditions of laboratory experiments and the complexity of real field ecosystems.

In Italy and most of Southern Europe, the optimal period for conducting semi-field tests is the March-September window.

Book now and let our experts help you!

Further informations:
info@labanalysis.it