Digital Agriculture: Regulatory and Scientific Aspects of Precision Application

Anne Alix joined Dow AgroSciences, now Corteva Agriscience, in 2011, as distinguished laureate in Policy and Risk Management for Europe, Middle East and Africa, where she advises on Sustainability policies and precision applications. She has been working in the area of plant protection products risk assessment for 23 years. After a PhD in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) at the University of Rennes, Anne joined the French National Institute for Research in Agronomy (INRA) as an ecotoxicologist in the scientific unit for the risk assessment of crop protection products. Anne was nominated head of the Environment and Ecotoxicology risk assessment unit at the French Agency on the safety of Food (AFSSA, now ANSES), where she initiated scientific collaborations with the pesticide unit of EFSA. Anne then joined the French Ministry of Agriculture as the deputy head of the Section for Regulation of Plant Protection Products and fertilizers, in charge of the implementation of risk mitigation measures for pesticides and of post registration monitoring.

Martin Atzmueller is Full Professor (W3, tenured) at the Institute of Computer Science at Osnabrück University (Germany), where he holds the ROSEN-Group-Endowed Chair of Semantic Information Systems and heads the Semantic Information Systems research group. Professor Atzmueller is founding spokesperson of the Joint Lab on Artificial Intelligence and Data Science and founding member of the Research Unit Data Science at Osnabrück University, as well as Scientific Director - Cooperative and Autonomous Systems - at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

Adam Barlow leads precision application technology initiatives at Deere & Company, where he has served for over 16 years in various engineering and leadership roles. He is an active contributor to the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), having chaired both U.S. and international committees on spray systems. Adam currently leads U.S. standardization projects in precision application, collaborating closely with the Enivronmental Protection Agency, United States Department of Agriculture, academic institutions, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, and CropLife America. He also represents ANSI in global standards development.

Travis Bui has over 10 years experience having served in both Human Safety and Regulatory Affairs roles. He is currently working with Corteva Agriscience’s Human Safety Risk Assessment team focused on strategy and policy-related projects. In addition to serving as an expert in regulatory risk assessment, he is working to develop global regulatory guidance to enable crop protection applications with UAVs/drones. He is currently serving as Administrative Chair of the Unmanned Aerial Pesticide Application Systems Task Force (UAPASTF) which is generating UAV regulatory data for submission to global regulatory authorities to inform human and environmental risk assessments. He also serves on the CropLife America Drones Working Group and on the OECD WPP Drone/UASS Subgroup as a member of the Business-Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC).

Sébastien Codis is an agronomist working at the French Technical Institute for Vine and Wine. He coordinates a joint research unit with INRAE and CTIFL institutes focused on the development and integration of innovative technologies for crop protection, including precision application and in-field biological assessment methods, in support of the agroecological transition.

Joachim Dressel is the Regulatory Lead for Precision Application and Digital Agriculture- in region Europe at Syngenta. He has previously held roles as Senior Regulatory Manager for insecticides, fungicides and herbicides at Syngenta, as an environmental consultant and as environmental exposure expert at BASF. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Sciences and has a passion for agriculture as well as our environment.

Andreas Focks has been a full Professor for Environmental Systems Modelling at University of Osnabrück since 2021. An environmental modeller by training, Andreas worked at Wageningen Environmental Research, as a part of Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands from 2011-2021 His work focusses on mechanistic modelling of effects of chemical and other stressors on the biotic environment, at levels of individuals, populations and communities. Since May 2023 he has been a member of the ESFA working group on \"Effect Models in ERA\", and from July 2020-April 2024 he was a member of the EFSA PPR panel.

Emilio Gil is a Full Professor at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona (Spain). He is the Head of Unit of the Agricultural Machinery Research Group, and has been professor at Cornell University (ISA). Expert member of ISO in several Working Groups related with spray application technology. Emilio has over 30 years of experience in the improvement of spray technologies, especially for eD crops. He is also the Author of the Dosaviña App to adjust PPP dose for vineyards and been advisor to several governments, for instance Serbia, Chile, Cyprus and Spain, advising them on the Sustainable Use Directive.

Bernhard Gottesbüren is currently running Make-Sense Consulting (solutions in pesticide science). He worked > 35 years in the area of pesticide exposure assessment and lead the environmental fate modelling group in BASF. Since 2023 he has been involved in the development of frameworks for exposure and risk assessment/ management of pesticides, concering precision application.

Peter Hloben is Supervisor for Product Compliance at John Deere in Mannheim Germany. He oversees a team of PS&C engineers responsible for the product compliance of Crop Care, Harvesting and Hay & Forage machinery. He is also the Chairman of PT24 at CEMA the association representing the European agricultural machinery industry.

Jaco Kole is currently working as expert on the aera of crop protection technology for Fedecom, the Dutch association for agricultural machinery. Beside that is he as manager of SKL for more as 20 years responsible for the organization and supervision of the inspection of PAE in use in the Netherlands. Since 2005 he is active in working groups of CEN and ISO as expert on requirements and testing methods for PAE.

Jorge Olivares Rivas holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Navarra and an M.Sc. in Applied Environmental Geosciences from the University of Tübingen. His academic research focused on modelling of groundwater flow in karstic aquifers. Since 2020, he has been working as an Environmental Modeler at knoell Germany. In this role, he applies expertise in environmental geoscience and programming to support regulatory and research projects on pesticide environmental fate under EU regulatory frameworks.

Alexander Pfaff has been a Scientific Officer at the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) since 2020. At the BVL he is responsible for efficacy management of insecticides and involved in projects for improving the provision of PPP authorisation data. Previously, he studied Crop Protection and finalised his PhD Project on tomato pests.

Jonas Schartner has been working in the department for Plant Protection Products (PPP) at the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) since 2017. He has been head of the unit environment for fungicides and insecticides in the BVL since 2024, having previously led a subunit on the same topic. After studying Chemistry and Biology at the Ruhr-University Bochum he went to the Pennsylvania State University (USA) in 2011 for his Master thesis in plant biochemistry. In 2015 he received his PhD in Biophysics (surface chemistry and protein analysis) at the Ruhr-University Bochum.

Grant Stark is Head of the Evidence, Committees and New Technologies team, in the Chemicals Regulation Division of the UK’s Health and Safety Executive. His role includes identifying and determining the potential impact new technologies can have on the risks associated with the application of pesticides. He is currently the Chair of the OECDs Working Party for the Pesticides Drone sub-Group.

Jens Karl Wegener has been Director and Professor of the Institute for Application Techniques in Plant Protection at Julius Kühn-Institute (JKI), since 2013. In 2017 he was appointed to be Honorary Professor at Technical University of Braunschweig, where he is supporting teachings of the Institute for Mobile Machinery and Commercial Vehicles (IMN). Furthermore he is conducting the interdisciplinary and university-covering block module \\"Innovative Plant Protection Technologies\\" together with students and instructors from five different Universities: His main focus is on optimization and risk assessment of processes and procedures in agriculture. In this context Prof. Wegener intensively studied the possibilities, limitations and benefits of new technologies for different agricultural purposes.

Dirk de Hoog is a researcher spray technology and precision agriculture at Wageningen Plant Research. His research focusses on spray deposition and emission of (precision) spray applications by measurements and modelling.