Crop protection: Alternatives to agrochemicals

Basic agricultural college learning teaches us that integrated crop protection combines field and crop cultivation measures with mechanical-physical, biological and chemical procedures, the latter according to the motto: »As much as necessary, as little as possible«.

Intensification in arable farming over the last decades has led to many chemical crop protection measures sometimes emerging as indispensable, followed by the all-too familiar production penalties  through active ingredients ceasing to be used in the field (e.g. through official banning) or losing their efficacy (through resistance development). This leads to increased interest in crop rotation, resistant varieties or mechanical weed control. Hopeful alternatives in this respect are also biological and biotechnical procedures, as well as for digitalisation in general.

The increased requirements to be met for marketing and application approval, industry concentration on the most promising crops and growing regions (to which Europe does not automatically belong), as well as the »victory progress«  of herbicide tolerant crops: all factors have played, and continue to play, a role in reducing the number of officially approved products available. Insecticides achieve official approval only with difficulty with the result that susceptible gaps in protective cover now exist, for instance in Germany with oilseed rape, sugar beet and potatoes. For years now, further development of herbicides has been effectively blocked by the presence of glyphosate. Only now, the initially unexpected appearance of resistances has companies refocussing on this segment, although most action just now is centred around finding new fungicidal ingredients.

It’s been more than ten years since the EU decided to move away from risk assessment in official substance approval procedure and more towards critical substance properties: keyword »cut off«. The effect of this principle is now increasingly noticeable with well-known active ingredients falling victim one after the other and no longer receiving EU approval. The industry calculates that in the medium term only 100 to 120 substances will remain. In 2019, there were still 440 on the EU list. Taking Germany as just one example, the pressure is additionally increased by the country’s Federal Environment Agency having a veto right in the official approval process – and continuing to use this to make achieving national authorisation as difficult as possible. What’s really needed to avoid  build-up of resistances is the availability of at least three different active ingredient mechanisms. Particularly with »small area crops« this target has no longer been achieved for some considerable time.

Development costs and time of over 300 million € and ten years encourage firms to increasingly look to »repackaging« of already known substances, involving new combinations and new formulations. The innovation perspective with chemical (but also biological) crop protection tends nowadays nearly always to lie in the formulation rather than in new active ingredients! Where new ingredients are unavailable, at least the efficacy of the old ones might be improved and thus the amounts applied reduced, or the environmental effect bettered. The formulation route is not only the best way forward for the generic product manufacturers with their patent-free active ingredients in order to unlock new properties from older ingredients, or at the very least to get onto the market with a »new« product. If one does in fact find a new formulation technology, then this can be used with a number of substances. After all, there’s no need reinvent everything. Just look at the pharmaceutical or cosmetic sectors. What matters there too, are active substances and excipients.