In the future world, if human beings want to feed themselves, they will need continuous innovation from agrochemical companies. It is foreseeable that high-quality products such as crop protection products, crop nutrition products and biostimulants that are more sustainable, targeted, stable, applicable and efficient will lead the innovation of mainstream products in the future.
Major agrochemical companies will need new formulations, formulation auxiliaries and application technologies to better meet the needs of farmers around the world, while protecting human health and the environment. Listed below are the following seven challenges facing the formulation industry today.
Challenge 1: Compounding of multiple active ingredients
Multiple active formulations reduce the number of single product applications, make crop protection easier, and improve farmer cost-effectiveness. However, compounding multiple active ingredients in one formulation greatly increases formulation complexity. Different active ingredients have different sensitivities to moisture or pH, and some active ingredients may interact adversely, or react with impurities in certain active substances, which may lead to chemical degradation.
Challenge 2: Towards oil suspensions
Many crop protection ingredients, such as sulfonylurea herbicides, are sensitive to moisture. Use a dispersible oil suspension (OD) instead, to aid in stabilization. OD can also provide additional advantages, such as, when used as an adjuvant, it can improve biological efficacy. However, switching to OD formulations also presents challenges
Challenge 3: Microplastic Substitution for Microencapsulated Suspension (CS) and Seed Coating (FS)
Encapsulation offers new possibilities for agrochemicals, combining incompatible ingredients, improving product shelf stability, or creating products that can be activated in specific environments. Many existing encapsulation technologies rely on synthetic polymers that exist in the environment as microplastics. Some seed treatment adhesives are also classified as microplastics, and legislation banning microplastics in the EU and some regions will affect such formulations.
Challenge 4: Improve microbial formulation stability
Microbial preparations based on live microorganisms have high insect and fungal control and have great potential. This microbial preparation is also used as a biostimulant to improve plant growth, eg, it has the ability to improve nutrient uptake. These emerging microbial treatments can complement and complement traditional pesticide applications and improve agricultural sustainability. However, many microbial preparations have a limited shelf life and survive only weeks to months, even under highly controlled, refrigerated conditions. For widespread application worldwide, the stability of the formulation needs to be 1-2 years under various temperature and humidity conditions.
Challenge 5: Localization of agrochemical formulations
Many agrochemicals are created for one part of the world and not optimal for another. Localization strategies help companies meet customer choices or manufacture domestically using locally sourced, approved ingredients. By changing formulations, optimizing performance, and better adapting to different climatic conditions and soil chemistry, ensuring effective control of specific crop pests, weeds and pathogens in an area. When changing formulations, companies need to ensure that the new formulation is equally safe, effective, and compliant with the regulatory requirements of the target market.
Challenge 6: UAV applications and precision agriculture formulations
Precision agriculture is increasingly being used to reduce drug usage, control costs, and minimize the unintended environmental impact of agrochemicals. An emerging practice is the precise application of crop protection products or growth agents by drones. Drones are more targeted than traditional spraying, reducing drift and enabling high-precision spraying. In view of the small load capacity of agricultural drones, ultra-concentrated preparations are required for application, and high-concentration preparations often have high viscosity, which is to prevent product precipitation, but high viscosity is difficult to atomize, and the product is difficult to disperse in the air.
Challenge 7: Utilization of Plant Extracts
Many plant extracts are used as biostimulants and are also valuable for crop protection. Extracts from seaweed, or some other plant, are more sustainable than synthetic drugs. However, botanical extracts are composed of hundreds of individual components, and formulation chemists need to accurately identify each beneficial component in order to develop formulations with consistency and molecular concentration.
Post time: Sep-06-2022