Adjuvants Are Ready for Prime Time
December 3, 2025 The effort to establish adjuvants and their efficacy to regulators, retailers, and growers continues to make steady progress. It’s important work that sometimes happens behind the scenes yet is an essential force propelling the industry forward.
The Council of Producers and Distributors of Agrotechnology’s (CPDA) Adjuvant Certification Program, is one such example.
Austin Anderson, Adjuvant Product Manager, Helena Agri-Enterprises, serves as Chair of CPDA’s Adjuvant Certification Committee. The committee’s goals include informing the industry about the CPDA and its Adjuvant Certification Program, addressing skepticism about adjuvants, and helping the basic manufacturers, namely BASF, Syngenta, and Corteva, validate and demonstrate reliable product performance.
Anderson emphasizes that, “The costliest application that a grower can make is one that doesn’t work.”
For that reason, the committee stays focused on ground truthing adjuvant efficacy, sharing best practices, and promoting agreed upon expectations across the industry.
The CPDA is the only organization that pursues self-regulation to create standards for adjuvants. Currently, the Adjuvant Certification Program has 220 different agents that are CPDA-certified and 480 EPA-registered products that have CPDA certified adjuvant language on their labels.
The program’s Truth in Labeling initiative, started in 1990, adheres to the ASTM International testing organization’s functionality descriptors. There are 16 different metrics contained in the Truth in Labeling initiative, all of which are used to determine if a product can be approved as a CPDA-certified adjuvant.
Taming the Wild West
Despite the advancements in credibility that adjuvants have attained in recent years, there is still an element of the “Wild West,” acknowledges Anderson.
Adjuvants are not federally regulated and there are only 11 states that require adjuvants to be registered. They include Arkansas, California, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
This unchecked environment has contributed to inconsistent results and composition of adjuvants, limited use of standardized definitions, and undefined product functionality claims, explains Anderson, which has left some in the industry with a negative impression of adjuvants.
Turning that around means “making sure every drop does what is says it’s going to do…whether that’s drift control, spreading and wetting, or water conditioning,” says Anderson.
Next steps for the committee
One of the items the Adjuvant Certification Committee is exploring is the potential need for a drift reduction adjuvant (DRA) certification that is industry compliant. The CPDA developed such a program years ago but didn’t make it public, however it may be revisited, says Anderson.
At the same time, the committee continues to spread the word to retailers and growers that CPDA-certified adjuvants are a tool for mitigation for the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Ideally, it would be a real achievement to one day have the EPA support a statement such as, “By using a CPDA-certified drift control adjuvant you automatically get one point towards your mitigation tactics,” says Anderson. “That’s something that we’re working on.”
Meanwhile, Anderson remains focused on creating more value for the CPDA Adjuvant Certification Program.
That starts with “making sure that we address all the concerns from our internal stakeholders regarding participation in the program.”
One suggestion is to engage a third party to perform the certifications, potentially through the CPDA Adjuvant Centers of Excellence, “to help take the workload off our internal folks,” says Anderson, while also alleviating some concerns around IP sensitivities where competitors may review label content.
Why It’s Important to Use Only CPDA Certified Adjuvants
- CPDA Certified adjuvant products are required to adhere to significant, scientifically supported standards (16 Benchmarks) adopted by ASTM International.
- Certified products are evaluated for safety and supported by required toxicological data.
- Adjuvant labels and Safety Data Sheets (SDS) are reviewed by a panel of industry experts.
- Adjuvant claims and ingredients must be validated.
- Products seeking certification must meet certain requirements established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Subscribe Today For
