CropLife Australia, the national peak industry body for the plant science sector, has just released the official 2025 Resistance Management Strategies for fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides. 

These provide the essential guidance to help Australian farmers maintain the long-term efficiency of their crop protection tools.

Resistance to pesticides can develop quickly in the absence of proactive management and is an issue across all production regions. 

The new strategies are a must-read for farmers and environmental land managers to maintain yield, quality and profitability or manage and protect native landscapes.

“Pesticide resistance isn’t a future risk, it’s a current threat in every major growing region of the country,” says CropLife Australia chief executive Matthew Cossey.

“Without robust stewardship, we risk losing access to the essential tools that underpin modern, productive agriculture,” he says.

“Recent data shows 78 per cent of fruit, 54 per cent of vegetables and 32 per cent of cereals produced in Australia depend on farmers’ access and use of crop protection products.

“Resistance threatens not just the long-term viability of these tools, but productivity of the agricultural sector and food availability and affordability.”

The plant science industry through CropLife Australia invests heavily in the development and annual update of these widely used and relied upon resistance management strategies.

Developed in collaboration with expert technical committees including national and international scientific specialists, they offer clear, science-backed advice for on-farm decision making, helping growers stay ahead of resistance threats, and focus on:

• Alternating and mixing modes of action to disrupt resistance pathways.
• Avoiding overreliance on single-site chemistries.
• Applying early and appropriately to reduce selection pressure.
• Integrating with other agronomic practices to support best-practice pest and disease management.

“These guidelines don’t replace the product label and permits, they complement them,” Matthew says.

“They provide farmers and environmental land managers with the best available technical direction to steward these products responsibly and protect the productivity of their land into the future,” he says.

By following this advice, Australian farmers are also already implementing the best-practice approaches that international experts increasingly recognise as also essential in addressing broader antimicrobial resistance concerns.

The 2025 strategies are now available for free via CropLife’s StewardshipFirst.com.au website, with an intuitive search function by crop, pest or product type.

“CropLife Australia and its members continue to make substantial investments into innovation, R&D, field extension and resistance monitoring to ensure all product users have the most up-to-date information and innovations needed to stay ahead of resistance challenges and remain productive,” Matthew adds.