Inter-Regional Research Project Number 4 (IR-4 Project, also referred to as the Minor Crop Pest Management Program) has been established since 1963 by the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service

Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service

The Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture , part of the executive branch of the federal government. The 1994 Department Reorganization Act, passed by Congress, created CSREES by combining the former Cooperative State...

 in coordination with the Environmental Protection Agency

United States Environmental Protection Agency

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...

 to assist in the collection of residue and efficacy data in support of the registration or reregistration of minor use pesticide

Pesticide

Pesticides are substances or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling or mitigating any pest.A pesticide may be a chemical unicycle, biological agent , antimicrobial, disinfectant or device used against any pest...

s and the determination of tolerance

Tolerance (engineering)

Engineering tolerance is the permissible limit or limits of variation in# a physical dimension,# a measured value or physical property of a material, manufactured object, system, or service,# other measured values ....

s for residues of minor use chemicals in or on raw agricultural

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

 commodities

Commodity

In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services....

. IR-4's mission is to facilitate registration of sustainable pest management technology for fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

s, vegetable

Vegetable

The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant....

s, ornamental plant

Ornamental plant

Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as house plants, for cut flowers and specimen display...

s, and other specialty crops in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. While most of the minor uses investigated are small enough that it is not profitable for private business to establish the acceptability of a pesticide for individual speciality crops, collectively the specialty crops covered by the project make up almost half of U.S. agricultural crop production and over $40 billion in sales.