Wheat leaf rust. (James Kolmer photo courtesy ARS/USDA)

Digital supercluster backs precision fungicide development

Project aims at wheat leaf rust, reducing pesticide load

A West Coast ag tech company in the crop pest control business is setting its sights on wheat leaf rust, with support from one of Canada’s five research superclusters — but not the cluster you might expect. Out of the five federally-supported superclusters launched in early 2018, Protein Industries Canada has been most closely linked […] Read more

A healthy wheat head at left and one with severe symptoms of fusarium head blight at right. (Keith Weller photo courtesy ARS/USDA)

Pearce: Multiple modes of action an emerging reality for fungicides

As growers face more challenges from weeds, diseases and insects, many researchers, agronomists, advisers and farmers have shifted thinking from “control” of pests to “managing” them. Some of this trend is attributable to single-mode-of-action products and a reliance on one or two chemistries or technologies — but the adaptability of weed, disease and insect species […] Read more


(Arysta.cl)

UPL to buy crop chem firm Arysta

Indian chemical manufacturer UPL has raised the financial backing for an all-cash deal to become what’s expected to be the world’s fifth biggest crop chemical firm. UPL on July 20 announced it will pay $4.2 billion to buy 100 per cent of Arysta LifeScience — the maker of Everest and Inferno herbicides, among other products […] Read more



(Thinkstock photo)

Honeybees’ attraction to fungicide ‘unsettling’

London | Thomson Reuters Foundation — Honeybees are attracted to a fungicide used in agriculture with “unsettling implications” for global food production, a U.S. scientist said on Tuesday. Tests carried out by a team from the University of Illinois showed bees preferred to collect sugar syrup laced with the fungicide chlorothalonil over sugar syrup alone. […] Read more

Western bumblebee. (Stephen Ausmus photo courtesy ARS/USDA)

U.S. study links bumblebee declines to fungicide use

A new look at the environmental factors around declining bumblebee populations and ranges points to a less-than-usual suspect: fungicides. “Insecticides work; they kill insects. Fungicides have been largely overlooked because they are not targeted for insects, but fungicides may not be quite as benign — toward bumblebees — as we once thought,” Scott McArt, assistant […] Read more