An EPA proposal to gradually reduce the use of some Bt corn and cotton products in order to combat pest resistance is getting pushback from grower groups and has the crop protection industry concerned about losing products they still consider effective. 
 
EPA is considering a three-year phasedown to an unspecified “minimal acreage cap” of single trait corn products controlling Lepidopteran pests such as fall armyworm, corn earworm and western bean cutworm. It also is looking at a five-year phaseout of compromised — EPA calls them “non-functional” — corn and cotton products with multiple, or pyramided, traits.
 
The common characteristic of the pyramided products targeted for phaseout is they do not contain the Vip3A protein, which, as the Center for Science in the Public Interest said in its comments, has “no known resistant insect populations to date” and whose efficacy the proposal seeks to retain.
 
The agency’s proposal also would increase the amount of non-Bt corn seeds in blends for “refuges” designed to slow resistance by allowing nonresistant insects to mate with resistant insects.
 
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