Year In Review
2019 Overview of Global Registered or Launched
Pesticides and Analysis of Key Varieties
By Zorro Zuo
Editor of AgroPages
zorro@agropages.com
In 2019, the global pesticide market was revived and the
industry was gradually revitalized. According to the latest
statistics of Phillips McDougall, the global crop protection
(based on distributor data) reached US$57.561 billion in
2018, up 6% year on year (Y-o-Y), the non-agricultural
market reached $7.538 billion, up 3.1% Y-o-Y, and the
overall market totaled to $65.099 billion, up 5.6% Y-o-Y. After
squeezing out the effects of inflation and currency exchange,
the real growth rate of the global pesticide market was 4.9%,
an improvement over the figure of 2.5% in 2017. However,
it is still hard for us to ignore an embarrassing fact, that
the development of new active ingredients for pesticides is
becoming increasingly difficult, which is now an indisputable
consensus in the agrochemical industry.
By solving basic problems one by one, new application
requirements have been continuously raised, such
as resistance management, safety and environment-
friendliness, product utilization rate improvement and
biodiversity protection. In such a context, it becomes
increasingly difficult to find new pesticide ingredients,
resulting in lower efficiency, requiring more time and higher
costs in terms of new product research and development.
Then, the overall life cycle of a product is prolonged.
Currently, it takes an average of 11 years for a new active
ingredient to be commercialized since its development and
cost can be as high as $286 million, which is 55% higher
than over 10 years ago. To this end, from the perspective of
the global pesticide industry chain, multinational companies
will continue to dominate the market by developing new
formulations, new technologies and other innovative
mechanisms to control the registration and sales channels of
pesticide products.
In this article, we will review some major events in the
global pesticide community in 2019 by sorting out the newly
registered or launched key pesticide varieties prefaced by
several key words.
18 Annual Review 2019
Key word: Fall Armyworm
Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda ) is a lepidopteran pest that
can harm more than 80 varieties of plants. It usually feeds on the leaves
and stems of crops on a large scale, harming corn, rice, sorghum,
sugarcane and commercial crops such as vegetables and cotton. Fall
Armyworm, a major transboundary migratory pest in agriculture, which
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has issued global
warnings about, is now found in nearly 100 countries.
Fall Armyworm entered Yunnan and Guangxi of China from
Southeast Asia at the beginning of 2019 and is now found in 18
provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), posing a serious
threat to China’s agricultural and food production safety. In light of
this, there was no registered pesticide to prevent and control the
pest in China; the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs proposed
25 kinds of pesticide products for emergency use, including, among
others, single formulations such as Emamectin Benzoate, Indoxacarb,
Chlorantraniliprole, Pyrethroid, Acephate and other chemical
pesticides; Bombyx mori nuclear polyhedrosis virus (BmNPV), Bacillus
thuringiensis and other biological pesticides, and Fall Armyworm
pheromone lures and combined formulations such as Emamectin
Benzoate + Indoxacarb, Emamectin Benzoate + Lambda-cyhalothrin,
and Chlorantraniliprole + Lambda-cyhalothrin.
Latin America, Africa, India and other places have been invaded by
the Fall Armyworm and they have a lot of experience in fighting against
the pest. In Latin America, Acephate is currently an effective pesticide
registered to control the Fall Armyworm. It is shown in practice that
among the many traditional pesticide ingredients, Acephate has a very
prominent control effect. Only 1.12kg of Acephate is needed for each
hectare of cultivated land to achieve the best control effect.
According to other practices, Chlorantraniliprole is also one of the
most effective pesticides against the Fall Armyworm. Other varieties
with similar activity such as Cyantraniliprole and Novaluron are also of
single formulation with good efficacy. It is shown that the overall effect
after seven days at 0.088 kg/ha is the same as Chlorantraniliprole,
better than other pesticides.
To tackle the Fall Armyworm attack in India, Corteva Agriscience
launched Delegate, a broad-spectrum insecticide, containing
Spinetoram 11.7% SC, in July 2019. The product had been approved
by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare to help corn
farmers address the new, fast-spreading pest attack. Corteva said in
a statement, “It is effective against target insects at a very low usage,
without causing too much harm to beneficial insects.” The active
ingredient, Spinetoram, has been accepted for review and registration
under the Reduced Risk Pesticide Program by the US Environmental
Protection Agency.
Embrapa, a Brazilian agricultural research company, introduced a
new biocontrol product for the effective control of the Fall Armyworm. A