Fungicide trifloxystrobin with anti-stress potential

Scientists at Bayer CropScience have now discovered that a tried and tested fungicide that has been protecting cereals, vegetables and fruit crops against dangerous fungal diseases for many years also has completely new and extremely useful properties: trifloxystrobin not only successfully protects against harmful fungi, but also increases plants’ resistance to stress.

Ebbinghaus, a crop protection scientist at Bayer CropScience, is currently researching the active substance trifloxystrobin in great detail. Although the substance has been known for a long time and farmers throughout the world have been using it for years to protect their wheat, vegetable and fruit crops against harmful fungal diseases, trifloxystrobin, a strobilurin derived from a natural fungal substance, is apparently not only successful in controlling harmful fungi. Ebbinghaus is convinced that the substance also increases plants’ resistance to stress. When Bayer products such as Flint, Stratego and Nativo are used, an unusual phenomenon can be observed: fields of cereals or corn treated with strobilurins become especially lush and green. What’s more: “Field trials have made it plain that crops on which strobilurins were used gave higher yields than those protected with fungicides of other active substance classes,”says Ebbinghaus.

Ebbinghaus said that European studies have shown that Bayer’s active substance trifloxystrobin is streets ahead of other substances in its class, especially in regard to protein formation. According to these studies, wheat plants which have been treated with the compound are able to utilize the nitrogen in the soil especially well, even when there are only low levels of this growth-promoting substance in the field.

The Bayer scientists are now aiming to determine the anti-stress potential of trifloxystrobin so that the company’s products from Flint to Nativo can be used more selectively to increase yields in future.