PROPOSED RULES FOR GOOD AGRICULTURAL PRACTICE

Pursuant to my contribution entitled "Quality Requirements and Quality Standards for Medicinal, Aromatic and Spice Plants", I would like to advance for discussion the following procedures and concrete details with a view to establishing rules for Good Agricultural Practice:

1. Compilation of a synoptic compendium of all existing legal and private requirements relating to the quality of medicinal, aromatic and spice plants.

2. Examination of the extent to which the national pharmacopeia provisions obtaining in the various countries and the international GMP rules for cultivating medicinal plants are implementable (!) and where these existing regulations could be integrated within a code of good agricultural practice.

3. Contact with the national and international pharmacopeia and food commissions with a view to establishing practicable medicinal and spice plant monographs.

4. More meticulous care in selecting locations for cultivating medicinal plants (due account of environmental factors).

5. Monitoring undesired residues, pesticides and heavy metal concentrations should also form part of routine soil analysis.

6. Residue concentrations should be determined on the basis of internationally coordinated analysis methods.

7. Pesticide, in particular herbicide applications should be reduced, and "alternative" methods should also be considered in every case.

8. Uncontrolled fertilizer application is unacceptable in medicinal plant cultivation.

International Symposium on Heavy Metals and Pesticide Residues in Medicinal, Aromatic and Spice Plants

P. Dr. Heinz Schilcher

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1989.249.15