Comment submitted by Melvin K. Tolliver, Bayer CropScience

Dear Sir/Madam: Bayer CropScience supports the proposed rule to create a new oilseed crop group and to revise the existing crop groups for fruiting vegetables, citrus, and pome fruit. We agree that once this rule is finalized, it will promote greater use of crop groupings for tolerance-setting purposes and will assist in making available lower risk pesticides for minor crops. The proposed rule describes the activities of EPA’s Chemistry Science Advisory Council (ChemSAC) along with the IR-4 Project, Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), and Mexico to harmonize crop group tolerances within NAFTA. We noticed that the proposed new oilseed crop group and revised fruiting vegetable, and pome fruit crop groups are the same as those PMRA published in their January 8, 2010 Regulatory Directive DIR2010-01 updating the status of continuing revisions to Canada’s Residue Chemistry Crop Groups. The proposed citrus crop group also contains the same commodities, representative commodities, and crop subgroups as PMRA’s citrus crop group that was revised on May 28, 2008. The proposed rule also states that delegations from the US and Canada and IR-4 are working with the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues (CCPR) to harmonize the NAFTA crop groups and representative commodities with those being developed by Codex as part of their revision of the Codex Classification of Foods and Feeds. Although this is a great step in harmonized crop groups internationally, it would also be a benefit if the European Crop Groupings could also be harmonized with those of NAFTA. Bayer CropScience has some practical questions on this proposed rule, as follows: • For fruiting vegetables, EPA is proposing to add Crop Subgroup 8-09B, pepper/eggplant subgroup. The representative commodities are bell pepper and one cultivar of non-bell pepper. If residue data are collected on only bell pepper, will tolerances be established for crop subgroup 8-09B except non-bell pepper? • EPA p