Seed treatments for 2013 offer several changes and some new products

Seed treatments have taken a step forward this year with the addition of new fungicide Group 7 products. 


The new products, along with expanded labels, mean producers have new options for controlling soil borne pests and early season insects.


The new products also reduce reliance on existing fungicidal seed treatments and in some cases enhance their effectiveness. They also help avoid pest resistance.


Syngenta has registered new seed treatment products for 2013 that contain sedaxane, a Group 7 chemical that effects fungal respiration.


The lineup includes Cruiser Maxx Vibrance Cereals, which adds sedaxane to Group 3 difenoconazole and Group 4 metalaxyl-M. The insecticide in the mix remains thiamethoxam. 


It is effective in cereals against most of the common fungal pests as well as wireworm.


A new version of Cruiser is also available for potato and beans. The Vibrance cereal seed treatment is available for on-farm application.


Canola and mustard get Helix Vibrance, which is sedaxane in Vibrance added to Helix. The commercial treater-applied product controls flea beetles, blackleg, alternaria, pythium, fusarium, seed decay, blights, damping off and rhizoctonia root rot.


Also from Syngenta is Apron Advance, formerly a corn-registered combination known as Maxim Quattro. It now controls lentils, peas, chickpeas, dry beans, fababean, lupins and soybeans. 


It is made up of Group 1 thiabendazole, Group 12 fludioxonil and metalaxyl-M and should find its way onto many farms this year because of its multiple modes of action. Producers can apply it with an auger.


The product offers protection against the usual cast of blights and seedling rots caused by pythium, fusarium, rhizoctonia and ascochyta botrytis, depending on the crop.


BASF’s new cereal product, Insure Cereal, offers three modes of action: Group 11 pyraclostrobin, Group 4 metalaxyl and Group 3 triticonazole. It contains pyraclostrobin, which is responsible for the additional greening and plant health properties that producers have noticed when using Headline as a foliar fungicide.


It controls smuts, bunts, fusarium, pythium generated root rots, damping off and seed and seedling rots. It also suppresses cochliobolus blights and rots.

Bayer has added Evergol to Prosper and Trilex. The new product is penflufen, another Group 7 fungicide.


The addition provides greater protection against rhizoctonia while maintaining Prosper’s control of most typical prairie fungal pests as well as flea beetles with clothianidin. 


Trilex contains metalaxyl and trifloxystrobin as well as the new penflufen. Lentils, chickpeas, peas, soybeans and dry beans are protected from the pythium, fusarium, botrytis, ascochyta and rhizoctonia seed and soil blights and disease forms. The product can be applied on the farm with conventional treating equipment.