Published on 23/11/2021
Corteva Agriscience says it’s time for Success to bow out, but only because the novel formulation that followed it – Entrust SC Naturalyte with Qalcova active – can do the same job in the same crops, with the added benefit of BioGro organic certification.
Glen Surgenor, Corteva marketing manager, says Success was an important advance in its day, and heralded the start of a trend towards softer crop protection chemistry that has only continued to grow since.
Approved here in 1988 to control insects in fresh vegetables for both domestic and export sale, it has now been naturally superseded by Entrust SC Naturalyte, the organically certified biological which is also labelled for fruit, vines, vegetables and fodder brassicas.
Retailers have welcomed the move, which is being implemented globally, Surgenor says.
“It’s simplified things for them and their customers. It’s also provided a great opportunity to effectively re-launch Entrust, and highlight the increasingly important role played by biological products in our systems.”
There is still a perception that ‘soft’ chemistry is soft acting, Surgenor says, but that’s changing in line with global market signals.
“Unfortunately, some early products that were promoted as soft on the environment haven’t lived up to their initial hype, nor were they backed by a lot of credible scientific data. They sounded good, but they didn’t do the job.”
“And there has been a perception that a favourable environmental profile came at the price of good crop protection control. But with these newer products, like Entrust Naturalyte, it’s been shown you can achieve both.”
Globally, the biological crop protection category is expanding rapidly, he says. Corteva Agriscience now has a big focus on developing biologicals alongside developing conventional products.
“Consumer demand world-wide is driving the market towards sustainable biological solutions; that’s not going to disappear, so we need to be able to incorporate some of these practices into our current production systems.”
Producers are moving toward biologicals the same way they moved away from organo-phosphates and into newer chemistry, he says: “It’s a natural evolution.”
First registered in NZ in 2015, Entrust SC Naturalyte is highly effective on caterpillars, including leaf roller, diamond back moth, white butterfly and potato tuber moth; thrips and cherry and pear slug.
Fast acting, IPM compatible and naturally derived, it has a very favourable environmental profile, and low impact on beneficial predator insects, including ladybirds, lacewings and spiders.
Labelled crops include avocados, citrus, field tomatoes, for-age and vegetable brassicas, kiwifruit, pipfruit, grapes, potatoes and stonefruit.
For more detail contact your Corteva Agriscience territory sales manager.