A survey study of the level of pesticide residues in Egyptian exports of vegetables for the period 2015-2019, based on the RASFF databas

Abstract

Egypt is one of the countries that depend on the export of vegetables and fruits to European Union countries. It follows the procedures imposed by those countries from the organized RASFF that sets special conditions for the quality of those products. Some of the restrictions set by RASFF are concerned with pesticide residues in vegetables and fruits. In this study, data on Egyptian exports of vegetables tracked from the RASFF database organized from 2015 to 2019.

The results showed that, about 52 samples banned from the Egyptian exports of vegetables during the period from 2015 to 2019 were due to the high levels of pesticide residues viz: the maximum residues limits .The highest frequent samples under study recorded in the year 2015 at 46.15%, followed by year 2016 and 2017 reaching 21.5%. While the lowest recorded, years were 2018-2019 (5.77 and 3.85 %), respectively. Twenty-four active ingredients recorded in the samples under study. The most detected pesticide groups were insecticides (50%) followed by fungicides (37.5%). All samples were free from any detectable residues of herbicidal active ingredients. While recording, propargite was the highest incidence of samples with 14.46% followed by chlorpyrifos, methomyl, and flusilazole, with percentage frequencies of 12.05%, 10.84%, and 9.64%, respectively. Fourteen out of twenty-four active ingredients registered in the state of Egypt, with the percentage of 58.33 %. The percentage of not registered pesticides was 33.33 %  and 8.32% of restricted pesticides use ,of the findings as well as the pesticides revoked by Egyptian authorization.