The Parliamentary British Fruit Industry Group held a strawberry tasting at the House of Lords on Monday, sponsored by Bayer CropScience.

Guests were treated to a range of varieties, with prominence given in particular to Jubilee, and hosted by Lord Mayhew, president of the Marden Fruit Show Society, pictured centre.

Bayer's head of development and regulatory affairs Dr Peter Brain, right, and head of business stewardship Chris Kyndt, left, outlined the company's commitment to discovering new control options for all parts of the agricultural and horticultural industry.

'Bayer CropScience is keenly aware of the problems facing UK fruit growers at the moment,' Brain said: 'In many production sectors there are already limited options for crop protection, and many of the existing uses are threatened with removal during the ongoing EU Review programme. Bayer CropScience has set up a small, dedicated commercial and technical team within its UK organisation to service UK horticulture and to assist the introduction of new compounds and uses.' Bayer CropScience is the global leader in R&D for chemical crop protection and reinvests more than 10 per cent of its global sales in its research programme.

The current success rate for introducing new compounds is about one in 140,000 candidates, said Brain, and the cost of introducing a new compound is around $184 million. This compares with a success rate of one in 152,000 compounds in 1995, at a cost of $152m. It takes between eight and 10 years from synthesis of a compound to achieve the first commercial registration.

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