Bayer CropScience will introduce soon a new class of chemistry that will be an alternative to imidacloprid, the company’s embattled systemic insecticide that has been implicated in honey bee deaths. The new active ingredient is flupyradifurone. It is a systemic from the butenolide chemical class and is active on sucking insect pests. it will be registered in 2015 and marketed by Bayer under the trade name Sivanto™ as a “bee friendly” product with no bloom (application) restrictions.
Source: Agronews, 18 December 2013
http://news.agropages.com/News/NewsDetail---11228.htm
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Imidacloprid revisited
I have researched the compound. The same problems as with imidacloprid can be anticipated. The substance is highly soluble in water (3200 mg/L), is likely to leach into groundwater (GUS Groundwater Ubiquity Score = 3.74), persistent and mobile in soil (DT50 (field) = 130 days; Koc = 98.4). Environmental pollution is likely to occur.
Explanatory notes:
1. DT50 is the time required for the chemical concentration under defined conditions to decline to 50% of the amount at application
2. Chemicals vary in how well they are adsorbed to soil particles. Koc / Kfoc measures the affinity for chemicals to sorb to organic carbon. The higher the value, the stronger the tendency to attach to and move with soil. Koc / Kfoc values greater than 1,000 indicate strong adsorption to soil. Chemicals with lower Koc / Kfoc values (less than 500) tend to move more with water than adsorbed to sediment.
3. The GUS index (Groundwater Ubiquity Score) is a very simple indicator of a chemical potential for leaching into groundwater. Calculated from the soil degradation rate (DT50) and the Organic-carbon sorption constant (koc) where:
GUS = log (DT50) x (4 – log (koc))
If GUS > 2.8 = likely to leach
If GUS < 1.8 = unlikely to leach
If GUS 1.8 – 2.8 = leaching potential is marginal
(Reference: Gustafson, D.I. (1989) Groundwater Ubiquity Score: A Simple Method for Assessing Pesticide Leachability Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 8, pp339-357)
Data source:
University of Hertfordshire (2013) The Pesticide Properties DataBase (PPDB) developed by the Agriculture & Environment Research Unit (AERU), University of Hertfordshire, 2006-2013.