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The Washington Ag ProjectFunded by the Washington State Commission on Pesticide Registration Supported by the Washington State Department of Agriculture In 1995, Alan Schreiber and Laura Ritchie, then from Washington State University's Food and Environmental Quality Lab, published a book called "Washington Minor Crops." This book broke new ground on describing Washington agriculture and described 176 crops or crop groupings and covered more than 200 crops. In 2006, the Washington State Commission on Pesticide Registration Commission, in cooperation with the Washington State Department of Agriculture, commissioned an effort to revised, expand and update this effort. The major difference between the original book and this effort is that the Washington Ag Project is available on-line. This version contains pictures, improved maps, more crops, is updateable. An important feature of this online data base is that it is searchable. Any key word can be searchable. Searches. In the upper right hand corner of the first page of the website is a search feature. In the search feature enter a word of interest and hit "Go." The search engine will list a paragraph from each crop description that contains the searched word. For complete access to the description, click on the highlighted hypertext. Search on the pest "green peach aphid" and all crops that mention GPA as a pest will be retrieved. Search on the herbicide "Treflan" and all crops that are treated with this herbicide will be retrieved. Search on any pest, pesticide, crop or name of a person and if it is contained in the Washington Ag Project database, all mentions of the word will be retrieved. An advanced search capability is available. Select this option and follow the popup directions for advanced searches. Brand Names, Common Names and Generic Names of Pesticides. Every pesticide has at least 3 names, a brand name, a common name and a chemical name. A brand name is the name given to a pesticide by the company that sells its. This name always starts with a capital letter. Each company that sells a particular pesticide will have its own unique brand name or names (e.g. Treflan). There may be a dozen or more brand names for one pesticide. Brand names can change. Every pesticide has a common name. A pesticide, no matter how many formulations or companies that sale the pesticide, will have only one common name. The common name for Treflan is trifluralin. A common name never changes. Each pesticide also has a chemical name. Chemical names are long, complex and use of these names have little practical value in production agriculture. The chemical name for trifluralin is a,a,a-trifluoro-2,6-dinitro-N,N-dipropyl-p-toluidine. Pesticides are patented by their manufacturers. Seventeen years after the patent is granted, it runs out. Once a pesticide is no longer protected by its patent other companies introduce generic versions of the pesticide. Recently a large number of pesticides have gone off patent and large number of generic equivalents have been introduced into the marketplace. For example, the largest selling insecticide in the world is imidacloprid recently went off patent. While the product was patented there were 5 products registered on potatoes in Washington, now there are 28 products, mostly generics, are registered on Washington potatoes. Each generic product will have a unique brand name. Trade (brand) names are provided in this database for your reference only. No discrimination is intended, and other pesticides labeled for the crop may have the same active ingredient. No endorsement is implied. Progress on the Washington Ag Project. The crops are listed alphabetically with notations as to the types of sources available for that crop. This is a work in progress. Throughout the next two years we are planning on adding more than 80 crops per year to this data base. We are working hard on this source for you and, with the addition of information from the Washington State Department of Agriculture, hope to make this a valuable resource for many different user-groups. If you should find problems within our site please let us know by emailing us at aschreib@centurytel.net. Keep checking on us to see our progress. We will be adding information on a monthly basis.
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