BASF picked up Canadian registration for Priaxor

The Canadian crop protection arm of German chemical firm BASF has picked up registration for Priaxor DS, which it said will be the first Canadian fungicide containing its new active ingredient Xemium — BASF’s trade name for fluxapyroxad, part of the carboxamide family (Group 7).

Priaxor, which contains the new ingredient in suspension at 250 grams per litre, also contains 250 g/L of pyraclostrobin, the strobilurin (Group 11) active found in products such as BASF’s Headline.

"It’s not often that a fungicide with this kind of mobility comes to market," Jason Leitch, BASF Canada’s brand manager for fungicides, said in a release. "Priaxor DS acts quickly to protect against such key pulse crop diseases as mycosphaerella blight in peas and anthracnose in lentils. But it’s the ongoing activity that makes it so unique."

Priaxor, the company said, uses its combined modes of action to bind itself to the leaf surface for "immediate contact activity," followed by "ongoing systemic activity to redistribute throughout the plant for continuous disease protection — even on areas of the plant that were missed during spraying."

Priaxor DS’s label covers it for control of ascochyta blight in lentils and chickpeas, anthracnose in lentils and powdery mildew and mycosphaerella blight in field peas. The product is also registered for suppression of white mold in all three crops.

The actives "work together through multiple stages of fungal growth to inhibit spore germination, mycelial growth and sporulation," BASF Canada said on its website. Priaxor will also be rainfast within an hour after application, the company said.

Combining the two actives is also expected to help growers manage chemical resistance among affected diseases, the company said.

BASF on Wednesday hailed Priaxor as the "first of several fungicides in the BASF pipeline that will feature the new Xemium active ingredient."

The company in 2010 submitted registration dossiers for Xemium to ag chemical regulatory agencies worldwide, billing it as a "next-generation" carboxamide. The company announced in August that it had picked up Canadian registration for Xemium on a list of row crops and horticultural crops.

More new fungicide products containing Xemium will be "phased in," BASF said, as it moves to address global maximum residue limits (MRLs) on other crops.

Growers in some nations are also already cleared to use Xemium against certain diseases in various fruit and vegetable crops as well as field crops such as wheat, barley and oil rapeseed.