Future of pesticides are the "ChemBio" and nanotechnology, says Red Surcos

The future of agricultural pesticides will a combination of chemical with biological products—the so-called “ChemBio,” in a contraction of the words Chemicals and Biologicals. 

 

This was pointed out by the industry gurus of vegetable health that gathered recently in the city of Raleigh, North Carolina.

 

The global meeting of the sector, AgChem Summit 2017, analyzed the moment, the trends and the technologies that will be available to farmers in the coming years. The big questions that came out among experts were: “Where are the agrochemicals industry headed? What solutions will come out?”

 

Commenting on “ChemBio,” Sebastian Calvo, president of the Argentinian company Red Surcos, said there are a lot of companies thinking on how to combine traditional vegetable protection with biological protection. “In a lot of cases, there is a search to shrink the quantity of product used per hectare.”

 

“The industry has not been in the news on account of biotechnology. Now, the big interest and a lot of advances come from the side of biological products,” explains Calvo. Another big bet is pesticides with nanotechnology, which allows reducing significantly the dose applied per surface, improving the yields and environmental impact. 

 

The president of Red Surcos concluded that each time more competitors from India are entering the market. According to him, the Indians also have a lot of interest in biological products, but the regulatory matters are worrying, especially registration because several countries fear that these agents, being living organisms, could transmit any type of disease or have any collateral effects. 

 

“In the coming years, we will see if biological are an effective solution to reduce the use of chemicals. We will redouble our bet on nanotechnology […] I believe that we could combine with biologicals to reduce the dose per hectare even more,” he concluded.