40 companies sought functionality certification for agricultural adjuvants

Date:10-16-2023

The number of companies that joined the Spraying Adjuvants program, in the search for the Official Functionality Seal for Agricultural Adjuvants from the Agronomic Institute – IAC, jumped from 20 to 40 in just a year. The program's management celebrated the significant increase in companies linked to the initiative and informed that more than 100 adjuvant products were subjected to analyses developed and conducted by the IAC.

Hamilton Ramos

According to the coordinator of Spray Adjuvants, scientific researcher Hamilton Ramos, all tests and research associated with the functionality seal took place in the Engineering and Automation Center (CEA) advanced laboratory linked to the IAC. The researcher also explained that agricultural adjuvants are products added to the agrochemical mixture before applying the latter on plantations ″to improve the effectiveness of treatments and reduce spraying losses.″

According to Ramos, unlike agricultural pesticides or agrochemicals, adjuvants did not have mandatory official registration in Brazil. ″This regulatory gap implies risks for the farmer about the quality of the adjuvants he acquires,″ he added. ″Associated with a high-tech agricultural pesticide, a poor-quality adjuvant results in losses related to the producer's investments in controlling pests, diseases, and invaders,″ he explained.

Also, according to the researcher, issuing the IAC Seal for adjuvants took an average of six months once companies joined the Spray Adjuvants program. ″The Functionality Seal was an important part of a process that, in the medium term, aimed to establish standards that anchored an official, unified certification system for such products,″ Ramos said in conclusion.

(Editing by Leonardo Gottems, reporter for AgroPages)

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