Pesticide registration in EU (Reg. 1107/2009 EC) requires appropriate risk assessment for non-target organisms including birds. The European Food Safety Authority developed a Guidance Document (GD) to conduct the risk assessment considering a series of exposure scenarios from a combination of crops and growth stages, selecting relevant species at the lower steps of a tiered approach. The actual GD doesn’t include scenarios for pesticide applications on rice; nowadays bird risk assessment is generally performed considering rice as the other cereals. Rice paddy is characterized by two cultivation conditions: the dry one, comparable to bare soil scenario (as common cereal), for which groups of species are equivalent to those identified for the actual risk assessment and already reported in GD; the flooded one, typical of aquatic environments and wetlands, representative of a unique exposure scenario not yet considered in the employed GD. The aim of this work is to characterize areas of rice growing in Northern Italy, which are representative for humid scenarios (via GIS approach), identify and link the relevant focal species to them. A review of the grey literature will be performed in order to estimate presence, abundance, dominance and diet of species associated to North of Italy rice paddies. Indicator and generic focal species will be proposed for the lower tiers of a Specific Rice Pesticide Risk Assessment and suggested as potential model for the Southern European Zone.
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