The first product containing the active ingredient Revysol®has been authorised for use in the UK, giving farmers access to an important new cereal fungicide for their spray programmes in 2020. Approved for use in wheat and barley, the isopropanol-azole, Revysol (common name mefentrifluconazole), is the first of its class to be introduced to the market.
“This is very positive news for the farming sector,”says Michael Wagner, BASF’s Business Director of Agricultural Solutions for the UK, Ireland, Nordic and Baltics. “Revysol’s authorisation comes at a critical time into what is widely regarded as an increasingly challenging regulatory and disease control environment.”He adds that from the outset BASF took a completely fresh approach to Revysol,with regulatory needs driving the product development process.
“Key to the success of this authorisation was our decision to establish a new screening system to optimise Revysol’s efficacy against fungal pathogens while, in parallel, creating a product with a favourable regulatory profile. This has taken a big shift in mindset as well as in process.”
Revysol will also be available in combination with BASF’s best-in-class SDHI (succinate dehydrogenase inhibitor)Xemium®(subject to successful authorisation), for use on wheat and barleyfor the control, principally, of Septoriain wheat, Ramulariain barley and the rust diseases in both crops.
“This active ingredient is an important, robust mode of action for the market given the losses the industry has suffered over recent years,” Mr Wagner says.
“It shows outstanding field performance in both curative and long-lasting preventative situations, delivering a new level of disease control compared to existing azoles, even where shifted-sensitivity populations of disease isolates exist.”
Looking to the future, Wagner predicts that this Revysol milestone will be as important as BASF’s launch of the active substance epoxiconazole in 1994.
“We are in very different times compared to 1994; we now have unprecedented scrutiny of agrochemicals by both policymakers and the food supply chain. Our business has needed to draw on the ingenuity and experience of our whole team to find a new, more robust methodology to ensure that a strong pipeline of products continue to enter the market. As important as our own team has been, the community of growers we have been working with through programmes like the Real Results Circle, their in-field testing and honest input has been vital in reaching this point. Revysol is the first of many new tools we will deliver for the agricultural and horticultural sectors,” Mr Wagner concludes.
