On April 22, 2013, Chinese Ministry of Agricultural announced that it has set up the 7th Expert Committee for Fertilizer Registration and the 1st plenary session of the Committee has been held in Beijing.
The MoA acknowledged the 6th Expert Committee has made a “preferable contribution” during its service tenure. Over the past three years, the committee granted 902 temporary registrations and 1619 full registrations.
China implemented the “Measures for the Administration of Fertilizer Registration” in 2000. The Measures stipulated that the unregistered fertilizers are not allowed to be imported, produced, sold, market promoted and utilized in China. However, there are some categories of fertilizers exempted from these Measures, which include: ammonium sulfate, urea, ammonium nitrate, calcium carbimide, ammonium phosphate (mono-ammonium phosphate, di-ammonium phosphate), nitro-phosphate, calcium superphosphate, potassium chloride, potassium sulfate, potassium nitrate, ammonium chloride, ammonium bicarbonate, calcium magnesium phosphate, potassium dihydrogen phosphate, single micronutrient fertilizer and high-concentration compound fertilizer. The compound fertilizer, formulated fertilizer (foliage fertilizer), refined organic fertilizer and soil conditioner are registered with the competent authorities at the provincial level.
The applicant should register the fertilizer product by providing the data of chemistry, efficacy, safety and labels etc. The Expert Committee is responsible for technical review of the data and the MoA will issue the registration certificates upon the technical opinion made by the Committee. The certificate for temporary registration is valid for one year and the registration can be extended for no more than twice. The certificate for full registration is five years.
The 7th Expert Committee for Fertilizer Registration consists of 53 experts of soil, fertilizer, microbiology, health toxicology, quality control. There are three panels responsible for coordinating, reviewing the conventional fertilizer and reviewing the microbiological fertilizer, respectively.
