Canadian potato growers have been granted another four years’ use of Thimet 15G to control wireworm, for lack of reasonable alternatives.
Engage Agro, the Guelph company that markets crop protection products such as Thimet for Canadian niche crops, and Amvac, the insecticide’s Los Angeles manufacturer, on Thursday announced the product had won yet another reprieve from being phased out of use.
Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) had been attempting to phase out Thimet’s active ingredient, a restricted organophosphate insecticide called phorate, but the company said the agency instead has been granting yearly extensions for use only by potato growers (except in British Columbia, where Thimet’s label specifies it’s “not for use”).
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The extension is granted on the product’s granular formulation as packaged in what the company calls “Lock n’ Load” containers.
Engage Agro credited potato growers’ organizations for their work in obtaining the four-year extension. It “gives potato growers the comfort of having Thimet in their arsenal while they forward-plan their management strategies and crop rotations for the next four years,” Engage Agro potato product manager Stuart Cullen said in a statement Thursday.
Wireworm has been seen over an increasingly larger area of Canada’s potato and sugar beet growing regions, the company said, and PMRA has “deemed that the wireworm problem in potatoes continues to be extensive and that no adequate alternative management strategies were available to growers.”
Assuming this one will be the last extension granted, Thimet 15G will be available for sale by Amvac in Canada until Dec. 31, 2011 and can be sold by its retailers and distributors until May 1, 2012. Farmers will be able to use the product until Aug. 1, 2012.
Engage Agro and Amvac said in a statement that Thimet “will have both companies’ full support for as long as it is needed.”
