Utilizing Special Purpose and Activator Products
The Growing Trend of Customizing Adjuvants Continues
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Ron Clawson, President, Kop-Coat Inc.
Agricultural adjuvants are considered one of the most important tank mix components in Integrated Pest Management programs.
Essentially, adjuvants improve pesticide efficacy, while having no stand-alone effect against nuisance pests. Adjuvants are typically inert, benign chemicals that allow other high value chemicals, like pesticides to work better. Adjuvants are typically added to the end-use tank mixture to improve myriad of chemical stability, physical application, and biological efficacy properties. Adjuvants can also be found within the pesticide formulation. The ability to incorporate these formulation adjuvants into the final concentrated products is limited due to available space in the composition and overall formulation stability. For clarity, the synopses below focus on spray adjuvants that are added to a final tank mixture.
There is no US federal oversight on the use of spray adjuvants with non-restricted use pesticides. Adjuvants do require proper registration in a number of states before they can be sold. A number of key agricultural organizations are doing an excellent job to set up and support self-regulation on certified adjuvants. These adjuvants are assessed to a minimum number of ASTM (or analogous) standards to ensure they are fit-for-purpose and intended to meet their label claims.
As formulation companies continue to listen to the voice-of-the-customer and offer tailored solutions to minimize the complexity of tank mixes, broadly categorized activator adjuvants will try to become more “one-size fits all” with properties of wetting agents, deposition/retention agents, and uptake promoters.
John Ward, Product Develop Manager, Kop-Coat Inc.
Identifying Adjuvants
Spray adjuvants can be used to improve pesticide stability in hard water, stabilize aqueous dispersions and emulsifications of herbicides, improve sticking of insecticides and fungicides, reduce drift of herbicides, and improve uptake and penetration into plants. Adjuvants can be generically grouped into two main categories: Activator Adjuvants, and Special Purpose Adjuvants. Activator adjuvants can be further sub-categorized into surfactants, oils, and Nitrogen based fertilizers (not captured in this summary).
Activator adjuvants are the most utilized additives for pesticide spray application improvements. This group of adjuvants includes surfactants, oils, and fertilizers. Surfactant based adjuvants are designed to improve the tank mixed herbicide ability to emulsify, form droplets, stick to the plant surface, and reduce surface tension of the droplet while on the plant body. Surfactants are further characterized by their overall molecular charge. For simplicity, they can be ionic (charged with positive or negative) or nonionic. Ionic surfactants are not commonly used in agriculture.
Nonionic surfactants (NIS) have no charge and are good at droplet retention and droplet spreading on the plant body. Nonionic surfactants have good ability to penetrate the plant tissue on the leaf surface and are typically made up of ethoxylated alkylphenols, modified alcohols, and/or fatty acids. Organosilicons loosely fit into NIS’ categorization and find selective use as wetting agents or rain fast agents. A next-generation of nonionic surfactant, (known as zwitterionic surfactants, containing a net neutral charge on two key functional groups) formulations has been developed by Kop-Coat Protection Products. These patented and patent-pending acid-base buffered zwitterionic surfactant formulations have been commercially evaluated against readily available NIS products in a variety of herbicide, fungicide, and insecticide pest control programs. Branded under the INAPRO® product line, these formulations have shown improved penetration/movement into the plant body, improved stability of the active pesticide in the tank mix, and improved pesticide activity.
Oils are typically used to increase the penetration of the spray droplets into the plant body by reducing surface tension and slightly increasing solubility of actives. They can be categorized into three major groups: crop oils, crop oil concentrates, and methylated seed oils. Crop oils are made of petrochemical derived oils cut and lesser amounts of nonionic surfactants and tend to show good penetration of fungicides/growth regulators and insecticides into the waxy cuticles of plant bodies and exoskeletons of insects. Crop oil concentrates (COC) are typically made up of 80% of an emulsifiable petrochemical based oil derivative with 20% of a nonionic surfactant. These formulations tend to penetrate like crop oil and spread like a surfactant. Methylated seed oils (MSO) are typically composed of 80% of a modified (esterified) crop-derived oil cut with 20% of a nonionic surfactant. Compared to COC’s, MSO’s have improved water solubility with similar penetration and spreading capabilities.
Activator adjuvants play a vital role in the effective use of pesticides. The wide array of solutions that adjuvants can offer to the end user has created the multiple offerings mentioned above. As formulation companies continue to listen to the voice-of-the-customer and offer tailored solutions to minimize the complexity of tank mixes, broadly categorized activator adjuvants will try to become more “one-size fits all” with properties of wetting agents, deposition/retention agents, and uptake promoters. One such example of this product is INAPRO® H, which is purposefully designed buffered zwitterionic formulation to span a part of the three of these categories for use with modern herbicide treatment programs. The INAPRO® product line uses fully customized surfactant chain lengths to dial-in on a desired property such as improved penetration or improved surface wetting.
Special Purpose Adjuvants can be typically captured under the general description of Compatibility Agents, and include acid/base buffers, defoamers, foaming agents, marker dyes, water conditioners, tank cleaning agents, drift control/reduction agents, and suspension agents. For the most part, these Special Purpose Adjuvants do what their general description states. They are often used as end-use concentrates that are added directly into the tank.
There is a growing trend offer customized product offerings that have elements of both Activator Adjuvants and Special Purpose Adjuvants. These products are designed to reduce the number of chemical inputs at the tank and allow for more customized pest management to the end user.
There is a growing trend offer customized product offerings that have elements of both Activator Adjuvants and Special Purpose Adjuvants. These products are designed to reduce the number of chemical inputs at the tank and allow for more customized pest management to the end user. Some examples of this include the KOMBO 950 LF® granular product and the INAPRO® PATROL offerings from Kop-Coat Farm and Forest Protection. KOMBO 950 LF® is a patented and patent-pending solid ammonium sulfate (AMS) based product where the granules of AMS are coated with a mixture of and activator adjuvant, a drift-reduction agent, a water conditioning agent, an acid-base buffer, and a defoaming agent.
Kop-Coat Farm and Forest Protection is the industry leader in supplying protective products, such as herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, growth regulators, and adjuvants to end-users within the global Farm and Forest markets. Well known as the inventors and developers of the patented and patent-pending TRU-CORE® advanced penetration process technology, Kop-Coat Farm and Forest is a division of Kop-Coat Protection Products, a leader in specialty chemical programs and application equipment to protect building materials, forest products and farm products from biological and weathering damage.
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