Australian chemical technology just acquired by Canadian giant, Agrium, promises to boost the effectiveness of herbicides such as glyphosate by an impressive 40 per cent, or more.
The dendrimer branched polymer science will also allow more active ingredient formulations to be stacked in individual farm chemical products and improve adjuvants and tank mixing activities at spraying.
It also promises to be a valuable weapon in the fight against herbicide resistance and to reduce chemical exposure to the environment when it hits the market in two years.
“This one is special,” said Agrium’s vice president of innovations and technology, Brent Smith.
“It’s hard to find good technology that works and is economical enough to incorporate in the chemistry we use.
“This is fairly unique because it will help us make considerable gains with product formulation and give farmers noticeably better results in the paddock.”
Work is starting immediately on commercialisation processes, with the first new ag products containing the dendrimer technology expected on the market in Agrium’s Loveland chemical range.
“We’ve got some product ideas already in the pipeline,” Mr Smith said.
Agrium is also keen to develop the dendrimer science to enhance plant nutrition application efficiency, with trial work already undertaken using urea.
The Canadian farm services, chemical and fertiliser giant, which owns Australia’s Landmark network, paid $35 million to buy the dendrimer technology, plus other farm chemical assets and intellectual property, from pharmaceutical and research company, Starpharma.
Starpharma already uses dendrimer processes to enhance the efficiency and delivery of drugs in human health treatments.
The company has evolved into a world leader in the use of dendrimers – a type of nanoscale polymer which increases chemical solubility and combination attributes – and is well suited to medical and pharmaceutical products.
For almost a decade Starpharma has also been looking at application opportunities in agriculture.
“When we started looking at how best it could be applied in industry, or other fields outside our core business, we felt agriculture was the most valuable,” said chief executive officer, Dr Jackie Fairley.
“The dynamics are not so dissimilar to our pharmaceutical activities, but we were able to develop a differentiated product.
“However, we are essentially a pharmaceutical company and after achieving our deliberate goal to prove up the technology we always realised it had to eventually be handled by a market facing business in the agriculture space.”
Mr Smith said current research suggested dendrimers accelerated initial plant kill responses achieved with broad spectrum herbicide, glyphosate, and achieved a four-fold improvement in the long-term efficacy of the chemical.
It’s ability to enhance active ingredient solubility and stability also meant more chemical formulations could be “loaded together in the can” – maybe three or four active ingredients rather than two.
“We can now look at putting active ingredients together in a way which just was not possible before now,” Mr Smith said.
The prospect of new multi-active formulations and improved product stability could significantly cut the number of spray applications on crops including the promise of more effective pre-emergent herbicides.
Agrium, which has 1800 staff in Australia, expects to continue the ag chemical research work started by Starpharma in Australia, most likely expanding the small Melbourne-based team which will now partner with the company’s other chemical product researchers in North America.
“There’s a knowledge pool already here and a vast library of technology which will need to be worked on over a long period of time,” Mr Smith said.
Agrium spent about six months examining the new polymer technology and undertaking field trials in Australia, the US and UK before settling on the acquisition.
“This technology was not something we had initially considered, but our science people were pretty excited when we realised Starpharma had worked out the economics to make it useful on a commercial scale,” Mr Smith said
“This development has a direct alignment with what we do and it will have a direct benefit to the performance of our growers.
“We’re very excited about taking this Australian technology to the next stage.”
Dr Fairley said Starpharma regarded the transfer of its research achievements to Agrium as a “win-win all round”.
“We’re very pleased it will soon be reaching the agricultural market in an effective roll-out which could have taken us many more years to achieve.”