Banned and Registered Pesticides in Nepal: PQPMC List Explained

Pesticides — विषादी (bishadi, often romanised 'visadi') in Nepali — are regulated in Nepal by the Plant Quarantine and Pesticide Management Centre (PQPMC), a federal agency under the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MOALD) headquartered in Hariharbhawan, Lalitpur. PQPMC doubles as Nepal's National Plant Protection Organization (NPPO) under the International Plant Protection Convention, and it runs a network of plant quarantine offices at border points along with dedicated sections for pesticide registration and management, pest risk analysis, and surveillance.

The governing law is the Pesticide Management Act, 2076 (2019), approved by the federal parliament in August 2019, which repealed and replaced Nepal's first pesticide law, the Pesticide Act, 2048 (1991), and its Pesticide Rules, 2050 (1993). A Pesticide Management Regulation (2081 BS) provides the operational detail. The Act's core rule is simple: no pesticide may be produced, imported, sold or used in Nepal unless it has been registered with the centre, and the Act empowers a Pesticide Management Committee to restrict or ban any pesticide judged hazardous to human health or the environment.

Since federalism was implemented, some functions — such as licensing of pesticide retailers and applicators, and field inspection — are shared with provincial agriculture directorates and local governments, but the registration and banning of pesticides remains a federal decision published in the Nepal Gazette.

Nepal has prohibited hazardous pesticides in six waves since 2001, and the commonly cited total now stands at 26 active ingredients (official tallies range from 24 to 26 depending on how group entries such as organo-mercury fungicides and the aluminium phosphide 3 g tablet are counted). The first wave, in 2001 (2058 BS), removed the persistent organochlorines targeted by the Stockholm Convention. Later waves targeted acutely toxic organophosphates and carbamates, driven increasingly by the goal of reducing deaths from deliberate pesticide ingestion.

The most recent additions came through a Nepal Gazette notice published in early December 2024 (Mangsir 2081): paraquat dichloride (a herbicide) and chlorpyrifos (an insecticide) were banned, with a two-year window for traders to exhaust existing stocks; the notice also re-affirmed the earlier ban on phorate, which had been prohibited since 2015 and received no grace period. Media reporting at the time noted that roughly a third of Nepal's registered chemical pesticides have been banned in at least one other country, so further additions to the banned list are plausible.

The chronological banned list is as follows.

Alongside the banned list, PQPMC publishes the positive list of everything that is legal: the 'List of Registered Pesticides and Pesticide Consumption Data' (पञ्जीकृत विषादीको सूची), updated periodically and posted on npponepal.gov.np with editions for 2078, 2079 and 2081 BS. According to PQPMC data cited in 2023, about 179 pesticide common names (active ingredients) were registered, sold under roughly 3,812 trade names grouped into nine categories. A given active ingredient — say imidacloprid or mancozeb — may therefore appear under dozens of competing brand names, which is why the list records both the generic (common) name and every registered trade name with its registrant company.

By trade-name count (PQPMC, 2022), insecticides dominate with about 1,787 entries, followed by fungicides (about 1,141), herbicides (about 620), rodenticides (41), acaricides (32), bactericides (24), molluscicides (4) and a single nematicide. Bio-pesticides form a small but officially promoted segment: PQPMC's 2019 list already included 14 bio-pesticides (such as Bacillus thuringiensis, Trichoderma and neem-based products) and 13 herbal formulations, and government policy encourages their registration with simplified requirements as safer alternatives.

In toxicity terms the registered list has become progressively safer. An analysis of the June 2020 register of 171 active ingredients found that about 42 percent fell in WHO Class II (moderately hazardous), 16 percent in Class III (slightly hazardous) and 40 percent in Class U (unlikely to present acute hazard), with only one Class Ia and one Class Ib compound remaining — categories that subsequent bans have targeted.

Registration is the gateway to legality. An importer or producer applies to PQPMC's Pesticide Registration and Management Section with a technical dossier covering the product's chemistry, bio-efficacy data (usually generated through trials in Nepal), toxicology, and proposed label. Decisions rest with the statutory committee established under the Pesticide Management Act, and approved products receive a registration number that must appear on the label. Registration is product-specific: a trade name is approved for stated crops, target pests, doses and pre-harvest intervals, not as a blanket licence for the active ingredient.

Labels must be in Nepali, carry the registration number, antidote and first-aid information, and the toxicity colour band based on the World Health Organization (WHO) hazard classification — red for the most acutely toxic classes down through yellow and blue to green for the least hazardous. Selling loose, repackaged or unlabelled pesticide is illegal.

The distribution chain is also licensed. Pesticide retailers — the agrovets found in every bazaar — must obtain a seller's licence after completing prescribed training on safe handling, and government-appointed pesticide inspectors may inspect shops, seize unregistered or expired stock, and initiate penalties under the Act. In practice enforcement is stretched: studies in Tarai districts bordering India have documented unregistered Indian-market products entering through the open border, which is precisely why checking a product against the official list matters.

There is no single online search box, but a reliable legality check takes only a few minutes using PQPMC's published documents. First check the short banned list above — if the active ingredient is one of the 26 banned compounds (for example chlorpyrifos, dichlorvos, carbofuran, monocrotophos or endosulfan), the product is illegal to import or produce regardless of brand, subject only to the announced stock phase-out windows. If it is not banned, confirm that the specific trade name appears in the latest 'List of Registered Pesticides and Pesticide Consumption Data' PDF on npponepal.gov.np.

For a physical product in hand, the label itself is the fastest screen: a legal pesticide sold in Nepal carries a Nepali-language label with a PQPMC registration number, the registrant's name, batch and expiry dates, and a toxicity colour band. Products labelled only for the Indian market, with no Nepali text or Nepal registration number, are unregistered imports even if the active ingredient itself is permitted in Nepal. When in doubt, farmers and agrovets can contact PQPMC in Hariharbhawan or the nearest plant quarantine office.

Registration controls which chemicals enter Nepal; maximum residue limits (MRLs) control how much may remain on food. Nepal has few homegrown MRLs and in practice references the international Codex Alimentarius limits, with food-side monitoring led by the Department of Food Technology and Quality Control (DFTQC). Routine market surveillance relies mainly on the Rapid Bioassay of Pesticide Residue (RBPR) technique — a quick enzyme-inhibition screen developed by the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute that detects organophosphate and carbamate residues within hours, flagging produce above the acceptable inhibition threshold.

The first RBPR laboratory opened at the Kalimati Fruits and Vegetable Market in Kathmandu in 2014 (2071 BS) under the Central Agriculture Laboratory, and the government subsequently added regional RBPR units in locations including Birtamod (Jhapa), Nawalpur (Sarlahi), Pokhara (Kaski), Butwal (Rupandehi), Nepalgunj (Banke) and Attariya (Kailali). These labs screen samples from wholesale markets and, when directed, from import consignments; produce that fails can be held or destroyed.

Border enforcement remains the weak link. In June 2019 the cabinet briefly made laboratory residue testing mandatory for fruits and vegetables imported from India, effective 17 June 2019, but Nepali border points lacked equipment — labs could screen only organophosphates and carbamates — trucks rotted at customs, India's embassy objected that the rule was a non-tariff barrier, and the requirement was withdrawn within weeks. Strengthening accredited multi-residue testing at quarantine checkpoints has been a stated government priority ever since.

Nepal classifies registered pesticides using the WHO acute hazard classes — Ia (extremely hazardous), Ib (highly hazardous), II (moderately hazardous), III (slightly hazardous) and U (unlikely to present acute hazard) — reflected in the colour band on every legal label. National pesticide use is modest on paper, averaging around 396 grams of active ingredient per hectare, but it is heavily concentrated: commercial vegetable pockets apply roughly 1.6 kilograms per hectare, and studies estimate that around 90 percent of all pesticide use goes onto vegetables, which is why residue findings cluster in off-season vegetable production areas of the Tarai and Bagmati Province.

Public health, not just agronomy, drives Nepal's banned list. Police recorded 7,223 suicides in fiscal year 2080/81 (2023-24), of which about 952 involved poison, and pesticide ingestion has long been a leading method. Researchers working with the Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention report that poisoning deaths fell substantially — by as much as 30 percent by some estimates — after the 2019 bans on dichlorvos, aluminium phosphide tablets and other highly toxic products, a pattern that directly motivated the 2024 bans on paraquat and chlorpyrifos.

For farmers, the practical safe-use rules remain constant regardless of product: use registered pesticides only for the labelled crop and pest, respect the pre-harvest interval, wear protective clothing, never decant into drink bottles, store products locked away from children, and prefer green-label and bio-pesticide options where an effective one is registered. Integrated pest management (IPM), which the government promotes through farmer field schools, reduces the need for chemical sprays in the first place.