In dietary risk assessment of plant protection products, residues of active ingredients and their metabolites need to be evaluated for their genotoxic potential. The European Food Safety Authority recommend a tiered approach focussing assessment and testing on classes of similar chemicals. To characterise similarity, in terms of metabolism, a metabolic similarity profiling scheme has been developed from an analysis of 46 chemicals of strobilurin fungicides and their metabolites for which either Ames, chromosomal aberration or micronucleus test results are publicly available. This profiling scheme consists of a set of ten sub-structures, each linked to a key metabolic transformation present in the strobilurin metabolic space. This metabolic similarity profiling scheme was combined with covalent chemistry profiling and physico-chemistry properties to develop chemical categories suitable for chemical prioritisation via read-across. The method is a robust and reproducible approach to such read-across predictions, with the potential to reduce unnecessary testing. The key challenge in the approach was identified as being the need for metabolism data and individual groups of plant protection products as the basis for the development of such profiling schemes.
Keywords: Genotoxicity; Hazard assessment; Pesticide residues; Read-across; Structural space alerts.
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