About us
OECD Coordinating Centre for the Official Testing of Agricultural and Forestry Tractors.
The OECD has developed Standard Codes recognized and applied in all Member States, designed to assess the performance of agricultural tractors and their protective structures, aiming to create a specific certification system to facilitate international trade.
The OECD Certification System consists of nine Codified Testing Procedures to evaluate agricultural and forestry tractor performance, noise emission levels and operator safety with respect to the risk of tractor roll over (Roll Over Protective Structures - ROPS) and falling object (Falling-Object Protective Structures - FOPS).
Tests on tractors and their protective structures are carried out by OECD-accredited Testing Stations. The Testing Stations accreditation takes place at OECD level, based on a designation proposed by the National Authorities of OECD Member Countries.
Test reports are submitted to the OECD for approval, and the evaluation of the compliance with the Official Tractor codes Test Codes - Improving farm tractor safety standards worldwide (oecd.org) is perfomed by the Coordinating Centre.
This certification system operates internationally and ensures the harmonisation and repeatability of test results among theTesting Stations. The OECD Certificaiation System, is the end product of a long joint effort between OECD, institutions and researchers aimed at transferring knowledge and experience into a standardisation path that, through an appropriate simplification process, produces comparable test results.
The Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Bologna for the four-year period 2022 - 2025, has become the OECD Coordinating Centre for the OECD Official Standard Code of Agricultural and Forestry Tractors.
The OECD Coordinating Centre designated today was selected through an international tender and has been delegated the following functions by the OECD:
- to examine the test reports submitted by the Official Testing Stations
- to verify the conformity of test reports with the OECD Standard Test Codes
- to assign the OECD approval number to compliant test report
The Co-ordinating Centre is located at the Laboratorio di Meccanica of the Department of Agricultural and food Sciences of the University of Bologna, its functions are overseen by Prof. Valda Rondelli as head and Dr.s Francesca Minarelli and Giulia Piovaccari.