WELCOME ADDRESS

It is a great honour and pleasure for the Faculty of Agriculture in Novi Sad and for me to welcome such highly appreciated specialists as our guests, participating this International symposium devoted to so important and striking scientific and practical problem as contamination with pesticide residues, chemicals in our environment and radioactive isotopes. Thinking about nature and the future, we must admit that it is not possible to produce drug absolutely without heavy metals and pesticide residues except when medicinal plants are grown at ideally balanced nutrient medium in hydroponics. Active principles obtained by isolation from medicinal plants can be purified from pesticides only by supercritical extraction.

A question raises why it is necessary for the medicinal plants we consume in small quantites to be completely free of pesticides and heavy metals residues, while, at the other hand, we consume big quantities of other agricultural foodstuff and do not claim for absolute purity what is even impossible.

For pharmaceutical product's efficiency, one must believe to it. We, indeed, trust more and more the phytopharmacy and are frightened by synthetical and chemical substances. Because of these facts, natural pharmaceutical product must be without pesticides and heavy metals residues, as the patient could believe in and relay on it absolutely, because it is the main sense of man's return to natural drugs.

Lastly, I wish to express my personal gratitude to the International Society for Horticultural Science and its Secretary-General, Ir. H. H. van der Borg that honoured our Institute to be a convener of such an important meeting, and special thanks to Prof. Peter Tetenyi, the Chairman of the Section Medicinal Plants, Prof.dr. Chlodwig Franz, the Chairman of the Working Group Quality and Prof. dr. Heinz Schilcher, the Vice-Chairman of the Working Group for their presence at this meeting.

Prof. dr. Jan Kisgeci
convener


OPENING LECTURE

Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasant duty to greet all of you here in Novi Sad (Ujvidék) Yugoslavia on the occassion of the first public event arranged by the ISHS Working Group for Quality of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants and by our Section. This WG was founded together with two others (Preservation, Culture) in Angers (France) during the Symposium organized there in 1983. The ISHS Council agreed to these three WG's in 1984 at its meeting in Aas (Norway) and we start our activities only thereafter. I chose Professor Franz (Vienna) as chairman for the WG and we decided the main directions for its activities. It was in Portugal at the ISHS Executive Meeting (1985) that I proposed the arrangement of a Symposium on the Contamination of Medicinal Plants - which was agreed. We believed, that it would be arranged in Helsinki, but the F.I.P. had a session with the same purpose during its Congress there in 1986; therefore we decided - with Professor Schilcher, who had agreed to become vice-chairman of the WG - to chose another venue.

I phoned Professor Kišgeci here to ask whether he was willing to contribute to the WG by arranging a Symposium. He kindly accepted the proposal, so that I was able to discuss the theme and other details at the first informal meeting of the WG's presidium - where we were joined by Professor van Assche, the Belgian member of the ISHS Council - in Vienna in 1987. We worked out a programme for the Symposium to be organized here and discussed its preparation afterwards with Professor Kišgeci last year. I can now state that he and his co-workers used then good offices to bring all of us together here. They ensured the best conditions for a fruitful scientif meeting and I feel - as you do Dear Colleagues - very welcome at this nice place in the big city of Pannonia. I hope that lectures and discussions will help our professional activities in the future, and I wish all of you a successful meeting for the benefit of our medicinal and aromatic plants.


PESTICIDE RESIDUES AND HEAVY METALS IN MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS - WHENCE AND WHY?

I welcome you all to this Symposium on "Pesticide Residues and Heavy Metals in Medicinal and Aromatic Plants". This is indeed a very actual, striking problem. Even if the number of those taking part in this Symposium is not particularly great, this may perhaps be due to the fact, that hitherto only a few of our colleagues have concerned themselves with these problems. Precisely for this reason we can look forward to extremely intensive work during the two days here together in Novi Sad. The size of the group is reminiscent of symposia 15 to 20 years ago: then, however, important and very diverse attitudes to the problems discussed were revealed.

The problems of contamination with pesticide residues, chemicals in the environment and radioactive isotopes - to return to the subject - have become very real in the last two decades, especially with respect to foodstuffs. Only with the revival of phytopharmaca did people also begin to think seriously about the contamination of medicinal plants. With the first legislative measures, for example regulations governing maximum contents of plant protection media residues in the German Federal Republic, a partial paradox arose. There were, and are, statutory limits only for nutritional plants, but not for medicinal ones, because the latter fall only within the sphere of drugs legislation. The relevant passage in the Pharmacopeia Europaea, namely that "all unusual impurities are not allowed, if common sense and good pharmceutical practice demand their absence", could well be interpreted as zero tolerance of contaminations. De facto, however, once again this is possible.

But it is merely a question of determining tolerable limiting values or damage thresholds, and of working out methods of demonstrating them? Should we not first put the question WHENCE and WHY these chemicals arise in the environment, and how we can decrease their future spread?

WHENCE the contamination arises may be relatively easily enumerated:

1. From the treatment of medicinal plant cultures themselves:
   1. with herbicides - in order to reduce the amount of labour;
   2. with pesticides - as a guard against diseases and pests:
2. From previous and neighbouring cultures;
3. From treatments of the plant material at harvest time and during storage against plant drug pests (storage pests);
4. From heavy metals etc. stemming from fertilisation with certain fertilisers, such as basic slag or refuse and clarification composts, in other words from the 'civilisation' refuse of our industrial throw-away society - or should we say one-way-society?
5. From emissions coming from nearby roads or industries, and also from remote transfer of chemicals and radioactive fall-out through the atmosphere.

The WHY of the problem, however, is more difficult to answer, since it also involves underlying questions of our way of life. We have learnt to make a wide variety of demands, without bothering to think out the resultant consequences. We demand a plentyful supply of energy, transport of all possible kinds of people and goods, comfort, constant innovations - how long is e.g. the "half-life period" of new products? We demand easy travel, a high quality of our food, both internally and externally, we demand luxuries, medicines and cosmetics, reliable supply of goods and waste disposal, low prices etc., but at the same time we demand a healthy environment, nature preservation, and pure natural foods.

Earlier tolerance of foreign bodies in foodstuffs, luxuries and pharmaceuticals was high, because these substances cannot be seen, smelled or tasted, and on these grounds tolerance of their presence is today very low! Naturally this applies especially to biogenic products, i.e. plant and animal raw materials, and also to medicinal plants, and most especially with respect to the after-effects of radiation.

Is it not true that all our demands totally overload the ecosystem, for we plunder raw materials, severely harm the whole basis of our life, annihilate structures worthy of mankind and the beauties of nature, and endanger our natural immunisation powers and revival capacity?

The ostensible reasons for our behaviour are technical functionalism, alleged economic pressures, and a very temporary welfar but do we feel so well?

Evidently this is not so, for we would not otherwise be sitting here today to discuss contamination, which in itself is in fact a limited problem.

Our thoughts are certainly not restricted to: application techniques, breakdown rates and half-life periods, and control of residues, however important these problems may be. During this meeting these topics will lead us on to a wide variety of detailed problems of a practical nature.

Last not least we have to thank the convener of this Symposium, Dr. Jan Kisgeci, and his staff for well preparing this meeting.