Classic fungicide captan becoming popular again

Captan is a conventional multi-site organosulfur fungicide, which is primarily protective and also curative to certain extent, having been sold worldwide with a history extending back for nearly 50 years.

Captan is free of metal ion, which is safe for crops. As one of the world’s most popular protective fungicides, after staying quiet and silent for quite some time, captan has regained its popularity in recent years due to its continuous development and application of the various potential functions of the product, providing a unique fungicidal action mode.

Captan can act on a large variety of target sites, being effective against both higher fungus and lower fungus. It can be used by spraying, seed dressing, hole application, root irrigation and flushing, being extremely effective on control of soil-borne diseases. The application of captan does not cause resistance, while having an effect of stimulation of crop growth. In particular, with the prohibition of mancozeb and chlorothalonil in the EU, the protective fungicides such as captan will have a good market opportunity. 

As per China Pesticide Registration Watch, a total of 60 captan product registrations have been granted in China, including 10 captan technicals. The details of the registrations are shown in the figure below:

Captan TC Registrations in China (click data to see more)

Product Advantages of Captan

1. An extremely broad-spectrum fungicide: Captan has a broad-spectrum fungicidal effect, whether being lower fungus or higher fungus-caused diseases. It is applicable to vegetables, fruit trees, field crops and specialty crops, with an excellent effect of control. Ground diseases caused by soil-borne diseases, wind, rain and flowing water can also be applied with captan.  

2. High safety with remarkable effect of control of soil-borne diseases: Captan is safe in its use against a variety of crop diseases, but will cause phytotoxicity to younger banana. Also, the use for table grape under high temperature and drought may cause damage, for which testing needs to be conducted before application. The use for other crops already practiced has been safe at recommended dose, no harm is evident even if at increased dose. In particular, Captan has a good effect of control of soil-borne diseases. Its use in soil treatment, seed dressing, root irrigation, rectangular surface treatment and flushing can effectively control the seed-borne and soil-borne stem diseases like blight, wilt, verticillium wilt, root rot, damping off and seedling blight. 

3. Broad range of mixability: Captan is mixable with dozens of fungicides including the mainstream fungicides tebuconazole, difenoconazole, carbendazim, azoxystrobin, pyraclostrobin and brothermothingonil.

4. A very evident stimulating effect: The actual applications and a large number of field trials have revealed captan’s significant inhibitory effect on the growth of moss in vegetable greenhouses. In the greenhouses where captan is used, occurrence of moss is reduced obviously. After 30 days of flushing application of captan to cucumber, cucumber in the plot of land applied with captan grows obviously stronger.  

Captan product registrations in China (click data to see more)