Turkey’s agchem market in 2013 and future trends

Agchem market in 2013
Of the total 28 million hectares of arable land in Turkey, 5.1 million is irrigated and intensive agriculture is operated. Turkey’s subtropical to continental climate allow growing a variety of crops, which drives the demand of plant protection and nutrition market.

The total value of Turkey’s plant protection market is around $ 450-500 million in 2013. Insecticides is the largest category, accounting for 31% of the total sales, followed by herbicide (28.5%), fungicide (28%), plant growth regulators (PGR, 6%), arcricide (5%) and biological agent (1.5%).

The total number of registered active ingredients are around 320, and the number of registered formulations are around 4160, and 1900 of them are on the market.

Local companies’ market share is 50 % of total by value and 80 % by quantity. China is the main pesticides supplier for both ready formulated products and technical for local formulations.

Main trends in agricultural pesticides market in Turkey

-  EU harmonization of regulations & withdrawal of registration
       Turkey is a candidate member of EU and should harmonize its regulation and MRL with EU. EU is a big market for Turkey for fresh vegetables and fruits export. MRL is very important for export to EU member state. To facilitate exportation to EU, Turkey has withdrawn 181 ais, which are not in annex 1 and not used anymore in EU level. Now there are many pests problems that needs new solution from  biological products, bioagent, pheromone, which are slowly growing market .

-Residue awareness in domestic and export market is increasing. More farmers ask residue level and PHI and tends to use shorter PHI products . Export companies also are very careful about MRL.

-More demand of safe products for pollinator bees and biological agent.

-Novel formulations, environmentally friendly formulations like SC,WDG usage are increasing.

-the demands for cost effective products is growing.