The availability of southern hemisphere and US apples and pears on the shelves of British supermarkets is under serious threat after it emerged the EU plans to lower the maximum residue level for diphenylamine.

FPJ understands the EC will recommend to the EU Standing Committee next week that the MRL for DPA should be set at 0.1ppm. The current MRL is 0.5ppm, meaning a huge amount of fruit would no longer be permitted for sale. The new MRL would become effective from November.

DPA is a postharvest treatment to control scald on top fruit. Although it has been approved in the US and many other southern hemisphere countries, it is no longer registered for use in the EU, though emergency use can be granted in exceptional circumstances.

Adrian Barlow, chief executive of English Apples and Pears, said the situation would bring gaps in availability during the year. “The thing I fear is countries will decide not to export into Europe, so there is likely in summer to be a shortage of apples on shelves. It will be detrimental to the category.”

Barlow added the UK was able to meet the new MRL thanks to a combination of investment in high-quality stores used in combination with SmartFresh, but there were major concerns about cross-contamination.

Anton Rabe, executive director of Hortgro Services in South Africa, said: “We’ve been in discussions via our industry associations and also WAPA and Freshfel. I think the processing countries are in sync in terms of what those MRLs should realistically be and hopefully sanity prevails and we get a realistic MRL.

“If not it won’t just be a South African problem – it will be a world problem. And in that regard one would expect some dispensation would be granted at least for the next two to three years.”

Rabe added that South Africans have been exploring long-term controlled atmosphere storage with alternative chemicals and modified atmosphere, and expressed confidence growers could meet the MRLs.

A spokesman for the New York Apple Association said president Jim Allen stood by his view that US shippers would have no option but to walk away from supplying Europe if the MRL was set too low. That could have a knock-on effect of growers moving away from Empire production, which is favoured in Europe.

Fears of cross-contamination in bins

While British growers are confident they will be able to meet the lower MRLs, new research from English Apples & Pears and OrchardWorld has revealed the difficulty in removing DPA residues from bins and stores.

In the last week of January, in a test of untreated fruit in contact with bins, residues rose above the level of detection – 0.05ppm – and will rise.

Producers feared that if the MRL was reduced to the level of detection the late-season crop would become unmarketable.

In other developments manufacturers of DPA have formed a taskforce which has appealed against the withdrawal of the product. A ruling is due in spring.

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