Optimising efficacy through agricultural adjuvant inclusion
With increasing pressure on both costs and performance for agrochemical formulations, usage of high performance adjuvants can be a valuable tool in either reducing active inclusion levels or in maintaining active levels to boost formulation performance and robustness.
Adjuvant performance is frequently predicted and inferred from measurable characteristics of the adjuvant, such as wetting, contact angle etc. In order to push this a step further, Ryan explains how Croda’s applications team have carried out testing to directly show the impact of adjuvant inclusion on herbicide performance.
Glasshouse trials using terbuthylazine
The purpose of this case study was to showcase the role adjuvants can play in boosting efficacy of active ingredients. We explored diluting a 500 g/L terbuthylazine formulation below its normal usage rate and then using three of our adjuvants to boost performance to be the same as a full rate application.
Aim: To determine if reduced herbicide loading plus an adjuvant, can give equivalent efficacy to full recommended rate.
Agricultural adjuvants used:
Atplus™ UEP-100 – A built-in agricultural adjuvant designed to enhance the uptake of systemic or translaminar active ingredients with additional spray retention and humectancy properties.
Tween™ 22 – Tween 22 has long been established as an effective agricultural adjuvant for built-in and tank-added applications with an advantageous ecological and toxicological profile.
Tween™ L-0515 – has a low HLB (5.3) and high log P (7.44), offering superior spray retention and spreading for both contact and systemic active ingredients.
Ipomoea plants were grown for 2 weeks (one true leaf) before the treatment was applied. Two days after herbicide application photosynthetic efficiency was measured as well as a visual inspection. Through this method, full recommended treat rate was compared to 25% treat rate with and without Croda’s adjuvants.
The visual results align closely to the measured photosynthetic efficiency, with Atplus UEP 100 demonstrating the largest improvement over the 25% herbicide control, and both Tween 22 and Tween L-0515 giving equivalent performance to the 100% level. Other data is also available.
All tested adjuvants have demonstrated the ability to restore terbuthylazine performance despite reducing active level to 25% of the standard rate. This data can give confidence in inclusion of Croda’s high performance adjuvant technology to build in robustness to a formulation.
Croda’s adjuvants allow reliable performance to be achieved even in adverse conditions where desired treat rate is not guaranteed on all targets.
To find out more information please contact us!
Featured
Atplus™ UEP-100
Featured
Tween™ 22
Featured