It has been a number of decades since any chemical manufacturer has stood up to report that the company has a pipeline of new chemistry coming to market. This is not just new products or mixtures but rather completely new families of chemistry for weed, pest and disease control. The announcement appears very opportune in terms of products that help address areas where existing products have been lost from the market or where pest resistance has become a problem.

It has been more than two decades since any company could have made such an announcement and this one is very welcome in a time of near despondency in tillage farming. The announcement helps provide reason for enthusiasm for the future.

Speaking at a recent product launch, Toni McEwan, country manager of the UK and Ireland for Dow AgroSciences, said that the company has three completely new chemistry families coming to the market in the next few years.

Early next year, a new herbicide being called Arylex will be brought to the market as two different mixtures for use in cereals. This new active brings two unique characteristics. It has a very broad spectrum of weed control capability from a new family of chemistry and it is equally active across a big range of climate conditions and weed sizes. It can be applied up to GS45 in all cereals, except oats, and has virtually no following-crop restrictions.

Next spring will also see the launch of a new insecticide for sucking insects. This will target aphids, among other pests, and it is also a new family of chemistry. This will be a critical new addition to our crop protection products as resistance to pyrethroids would appear to be an increasingly big problem for the control of aphids and BYDV.

Further down the line, a new cereal fungicide is being developed. This is also a completely new family of fungicide and should prove to be a very important tool in the control of septoria and other diseases. It will be very important for the protection of the SDHI products, if they can survive that long.

Toni said that these products have been developed in response to the stated needs of farmers. She was glad to be able to announce these developments at a time when confidence in tillage needs a boost for the future, a reason to have confidence.