To prevent pests, Adapar regulates access for agricultural machinery to Paraná

The Paraná Agricultural Defense Agency (Adapar) published Ordinance No. 129/24 which establishes procedures for the entry of machinery, agricultural implements and their transport vehicles into Paraná. According to the document, it is only permitted if all internal and external parts are free of soil and vegetable residues.

Among the threats is the weed Amaranthus palmeri, present in Brazil since 2015, but with no recorded occurrence in Paraná. Reports indicate that a single plant can produce 100 to 1 million seeds. Inefficient control can even make the harvest unviable, increasing the use of herbicides and production costs, with the potential to cause major losses to agriculture in Paraná.

“This is a species with great competitive capacity, which can lead to significant losses: in areas where it occurs, it can reduce the productivity of soybeans, corn and cotton by approximately 80% to 90%”, explains the head of the Health Department Vegetal from Adapar, Renato Rezende Young Blood. It is considered the pest with the greatest phytosanitary risk in the document Hierarchization of Pests with the Greatest Phytosanitary Risk in Brazil, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply.

The transit of agricultural machinery and implements with adhered soil, or with the presence of vegetable residues, is one of the main ways of spreading herbicide-resistant weeds in Brazil. Therefore, among the hypotheses regarding the introduction of Amaranthus palmeri The prevailing opinion is that the fields were infested by the transport of seeds in harvesters from Argentina.

According to the head of Adapar's Certification, Traceability and Plant Epidemiology Division, Juliano Farinazzo Galhardo, the number of harvesting service providers has increased considerably in recent years, and there are even cases of people selling rural properties to invest in the acquisition of harvesters more modern and efficient, and specialized in providing grain harvesting services.

Still according to Galhardo, the discrepancy in harvest periods between the different grain-producing states in the country means that, after finishing the harvest in one state, the service provider works in others sequentially, until the harvest is completed throughout the entire country. Brazil, and then the machine returns to its state of origin, where it will be used again when the next harvest begins.

The same occurs with producers who have properties in different states and who use the same machines for harvesting. “These phenomena directly contributed to a substantial increase in the interstate transit of agricultural machinery and implements to Paraná, increasing the risk of introducing pests, including Amaranthus palmeri”, He adds.

Action plan 

Adapar's Plant Health Department has been working within an action plan since February last year, when the weed plant was detected on some properties in Mato Grosso do Sul. The plan is essential to increase the protection of agriculture in Paraná and contribute to the prevention not only of Amaranthus palmeri, but from populations of other resistant weed species, in addition to fungi, viruses, bacteria and nematodes.

Adapar has more than 30 Agricultural Traffic Inspection Stations installed on the border of Paraná with Mato Grosso do Sul, São Paulo and Santa Catarina, where inspections of agricultural machinery and implements will be intensified, aiming to verify their compliance with the provisions of Ordinance 129/ 24.

“The rural producer who will receive a machine on his property, coming from another state, has a fundamental role to play in demanding from the service provider that it arrives clean, without adhered soil or vegetable residues, as this can bring pests capable of causing serious damage to him and even depreciate the value of his land”, he concludes.