BASF Crop Protection is well known for the super effective and ever popular Headline fungicide, but company officials say the newly developed Xemium is a totally different animal that will serve to complement Headline.
BASF is developing uniquely-designed formulations that provide complete coverage of the leaf surface and systemic distribution to ensure the product not only moves within the leaf but also to other parts of the plant not covered during application. These optimized molecular formulas should provide several characteristics that will make Xemium valuable to growers.
“In two years of U.S. on-farm research, we have seen impressive results from Xemium fungicide, especially in disease control,” said Scott Walker, Ph.D., BASF Biology Project Manager for Fungicides. “Field trials show Xemium to be a highly effective fungicide against several major crop diseases in a variety of crops including cereals, corn, soybean and specialty crops like pome and stone fruits.”
Listen to or download my interview with Scott here: BASF Scott Walker Interview
In the United States, Xemium will be a brand of fungicides, sold under the trade names Merivon™ fungicide, Priaxor™ fungicide and Systiva™ fungicide.
“Research has been conducted on these individual products, and we have seen consistent performance because of the continuous protection provided by Xemium,” said Nick Fassler, BASF Technical Market Manager. “Merivon, Priaxor and Systiva will also be important tools for managing fungicide resistance. When used rotationally with other chemistries, products containing Xemium will help combat resistance to tough fungal pathogens.”
Listen to or download me interview with Nick here: BASF Nick Fassler Interview
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“Our history and experience with carboxamides led us to the discovery of Xemium, which will be a strong addition to our existing global fungicide portfolio,” said Dr. Ulf Groeger, BASF Global Project Leader for Xemium. “The unique mobility in the plant ensures a long-lasting preventative and curative effect to protect the crop from damaging fungal pathogens.”
Just to give you a contrasting look at Tampa, here’s one from last night of the convention center. I call it picture perfect and hope it stays that way!
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We’ll have lots more details on Xemium, but here’s the bottom line. According to the research, Xemium has high intrinsic activity, long-lasting residual control, consistent distribution in the plant for preventative and curative effects, and broad spectrum control. Like Kixor herbicide, Xemium is a technology that will be used in a number of new fungicide products for a variety of different crops. BASF is hoping for approval by early 2012.
One of those experts was an old friend, former Secretary of Agriculture and U.S. Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter, who is pictured here with Bayer CropScience executives Mike Deall and Alan Ayers. It’s been a couple of decades since I had the opportunity to interview Clayton, so it was a real treat to spend a few minutes with him to get his thoughts on agriculture and trade policy, 2011 and beyond.
Measuring the effectiveness of social media really is possible – if know what you want to measure and what tools to use.
Dr. Tracy Irani (pictured) is Development Director for the PIE Center and she talked about the rapid adoption of social media and how agriculture has become part of the conversation, like it or not. She notes that social media actually has an advantage over traditional media when it comes to measurement. “We know that most of the traditional media metrics are based on the number of eyeballs or number of listeners,” she explains. “That’s where social media has an advantage because the return can be looked at on the basis of who’s in the network, who’s actively using, viewing, posting in a social media environment.” In other words, traditional media can tell you how many potential viewers or readers you might have, where social media can show how actively involved they are by retweets, comments, messages, etc.
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