Abstract
The University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences is completing a pilot project during which selected faculty members evaluated the efficacy of Chem-Search, a commercial database created by Crop Data Management Systems, Inc. (CDMS) for making up-to-date pesticide recommendations. This project led to a national initiative by CDMS to provide ChemSearch at reduced cost to university and government institutions. ChemSearch is the industry's premier searchable database for agricultural chemicals and contains product label information for over 1,600 crop protection and special products, including 24Cs, Section 18s and Supplemental Labels. ChemSearch is updated daily, easy to learn, and searchable by crop, pests, active ingredient, state, etc. to provide a label summary. The ChemSearch database was searched for pesticides currently registered for tropical fruit crops in Florida, e.g., avocado, banana, carambola, guava, lychee, mango, papaya, mamey sapote, and others. The number of available insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides were compared and representative examples will be presented for selected tropical fruit crops. Finally, tips will be provided for easily conducting rapid and comprehensive searches of the ChemSearch database.
