Integration of chemical and biologicals the way forward for BASF

By Lukie Pieterse

BASF are repositioning themselves in the fruit and vegetable sector with this being identified as one out of the four strategic foci for the future.

Matthew Goodson, who heads up the speciality crop sector in the UK, explains that the company has laid out its future intentions and has indicated that the fruit and vegetable sector will be considered as a key sector for the company to develop.

“We have been trying to make sure our growers have access to the best crop protection products such as Signum (boscalid and pyraclostrobin) and Perseus (fluxapyroxad (Xemium) and difenconazole). Both these products have strong labels for vegetable growers in particular and a string of EAMU’s which are essential in this sector. Signum has over 70 EAMUs and Perseus too has added a number of key crops via the EAMU system only from last year,” reports Matthew.

“With the acquisition of Becker Underwood a few years ago, the largest entompathogenic nematode producer in the world, we have made available a number of biological products such as Nemasys L and Nemasys C. There is increasing pressure for effective pest and disease control in fruit and vegetable crops, but there is also more legislation and higher consumer demands for quality produce with low residues.

This is why we have been working hard to develop biological products in this speciality sector. We believe that integration of chemical and biologicals has to be the way forward.

As a good example, the biological fungicide Serifel based on Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain MB1600, can easily be integrated in a programme with the fungicide Charm, which contains Xemium and the triazole difenconazole. You will be seeing more biologicals from the BASF stable in the future.”

“We also believe in developing our successful and high performance active ingredients in the broad acre crops into the specialist areas, too. Examples of this include Charm and Perseus which both contain the best SDHI active fluaxapyroxad. So our growers can use the best there is.

In the future we are anticipating the highly effective revysol fungicide (mefentrifluconazole) to be developed for use in fruit and vegetables. And we are also looking to develop new herbicides too.”
 
“There is no reason to think that we are just a cereal fungicide company any longer as we are repositioning ourselves strongly with the intention of achieving the Global Number 3 position in speciality crops in the future.”