Ishihara Gearing Up to Market High-promise Paddy Herbicides

Ishihara Sangyo Kaisha said it plans to conduct this year nationwide field-testing for its new herbicide ingredient flucetosulfron in preparation for the start of full-scale marketing in 2011.The potential major seller requires only minute amounts to act against difficult-to-manage barnyard grass, even after growth to the four-leaf stage.

The company, which had been falling behind its rivals, aims to recover its lost position in the paddy-herbicide market with its new ingredient. Flucetosulfron is to be put on the market in five formats, as a product containing only flucetosulfron and as four formulations of flucetosulron mixed with other chemicals. Annual sales of 1.2bn yen($13.2mn)after three years and peak sales of 2.1bn yen are expected for the flucetosulfron lineup, and ishihara’s overall sales of paddy herbicides are projected to reach 4bn at the peak.

Flucetosulfron, registered as a pesticide in Japan in June 2009, is a sulfonylurea-based herbicide originally developed by South Korea’s LG Life Sciences, formerly part of LG Chem Investment. Ishihara and LG agreed in 2001 to undertake cooperative evaluation testing of flucetosulfron in Japan, as Ishihara was seeking a new noticeable paddy herbicide and LG a Japanese Partner to conduct the tests.

Flucetosulfron, which stunts plant growth by inhibiting the plant’s acetolactate synthase enzyme that is involved in the synthesis of branched-chain amino acids, has been shown to have significant efficacy against barnyard grass, which grows extensively in Japan’s paddy fields, especially in the four-leaf stages of plant growth. It is applied in extremely small amounts to achieve its effected, resulting in low environmental load.

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