Insecticides

AgZen, Corteva Team up on AI-Powered, Retrofit Sprayer Tech

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 16:10:42 GMT

AgZen announces an agreement with Corteva to further “explore the commercial potential” of AgZen’s AI-powered crop spraying optimization technology, RealCoverage.

The news comes on the heels of Corteva’s big announcement on Oct. 1 , detailing the crop protection multinational’s plan to split its crop protection and seeds businesses.

AgZen, a tech startup spun out of MIT, is making a name for itself by pioneering feedback optimization for spray applications — a new approach the company thinks has potential to improve farmer outcomes and reduce crop input costs.

(AgZen)

AgZen’s first product, RealCoverage, is a retrofit kit that can be bolted onto any sprayer to measure and optimize the number of drops of agrochemicals applied to crops. The system features a boom-mounted sensor that analyzes the coverage and quality of spray applications in real-time, displaying actionable data to a tablet mounted in the cab. Farmers can use the data to optimize the physical settings on spray rigs, both self-propelled and pull-behind, to increase coverage.

The startup says its system works by leveraging AI and cutting-edge computer vision, and customers have used RealCoverage to save 30% to 50% on input costs.

Farmer Feedback

(AgZen)

Northwest Indiana farmer Bryan Brost slapped a RealCoverage system onto his Hagie STS 16 high-clearance sprayer to use on his waxy corn and soybean crops. He says it has helped boost his spray program efficiency overall by reducing application rates while maintaining optimal coverage throughout his 12,000-acre operation.

“The payback came in the first year,” he tells Farm Journal via text message. “We have increased our acres [covered] per day with less hours on the machine, the operator and the nurse tanks supplying product [to the sprayer].”

Corey McIntosh set the technology loose across his 4,000 acre spread in Missouri Valley, Iowa. He is looking forward to using the data to improve his application efficiency across the board. He’s also letting his neighbors and local retailer in on the secret.

“I was getting a chem shuttle refilled at [the] co-op, these guys have always been complimentary of our weed control, I asked them: ‘What percentage of leaf surface area do you think you are covering with your sprayers?’ One of their best operators said he thought 50% coverage. The salesman next to him said it would definitely be more than 60%,” McIntosh says.

“They were shocked when I told them we were at 9% to 10%, but nobody has had ever had a way to quantify this before,” he adds. “We are really looking forward to making improvements.”

Since launching on the market in 2024, AgZen says it covered more than 970,000 commercial acres of application across the U.S. on row crops and specialty crops.

Your Next Read: Breakthrough Fungicide Delivers White Mold Disease Control in Key Crops

Corteva's Bold Move: What Splitting Crop Protection and Seed Businesses Means for the Future

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:27:19 GMT

Global agriculture technology company Corteva announced plans on Wednesday to separate into two independent, publicly traded entities: “new” Corteva, which will continue to sell crop protection products – herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and biologicals – and SpinCo, which will focus on the seed genetics business.

SpinCo will include Pioneer, the company’s legacy seed brand established in 1926, as well as Brevant and regional seed brands, including Dairyland Seed.

Upon separation of the companies, Greg Page, current Corteva chairman, will lead new Corteva, while Chuck Magro, current Corteva CEO, will become CEO of SpinCo.

In announcing the decision by Corteva, Magro said the farmer-centric organization appreciates that its customers want and need choice across their input decisions.

“The best way, maybe I can even say, the only way for this company to preserve and expand that choice and keep putting innovative, effective, sustainable solutions into the hands of farmers around the world is to give both businesses the freedom to operate without having to look out for the other,” said Magro, during an online presentation primarily focused on company investors.

He added that the separation of the company into two entities will allow both businesses to maximize long-term value for farmers, customers, employees and shareholders.

Magro described SpinCo – with expected net sales of $9.9 billion in 2025 (56% of current Corteva sales) – as “a classic growth compounder” that will pursue opportunities in out-licensing, hybrid wheat, biofuels and gene editing.

“The continued success of our SpinCo business will be predicated upon sustained investment in advanced genetics and further capitalizing on our unique route to market,” Magro said.

As a pure-play crop genetics company, Magro predicts SpinCo could go beyond its corn and soybean core into other row crops, even expanding into other areas like fruits and vegetables.

“Spinco will also look to expand on new opportunities in wheat, cotton, rice and other products, where genetics can play a transformative role,” he said. “In other words, we could see SpinCo playing in a vastly expanded addressable market.”

Corteva Crop Protection Business Is Future-Focused

For new Corteva, Magro characterized the crop protection industry as competitive and tough, but that company leaders anticipate the market will return to growth in the near future.

“At new Corteva, success will be built upon an optimized supply chain, a new level of operational excellence and the ability to invest in the next generation of sustainable, differentiated innovation, including biologicals and other nature-based products,” he said.

Magro said as company leaders weighed the pros and cons of separating the two companies, they made the decision with the future in mind.

“This is not about today, and it’s not certainly about the last six years. This is about what we see coming,” he said. “We’re in a market that we need to look out 10-years plus. That’s just the research and development and the timeline it takes to bring technology into the marketplace. So this is a long-term decision that we are making.”

Corteva’s 2025 net sales for its crop protection business are estimated to be $7.8 billion (44% of the current company’s total).

During Magro’s remarks, he gave no indication of where the two companies will be based. Corteva’s global headquarters is currently based in Indianapolis, Ind., while Johnston, Iowa, is home to its seed business.

The transaction separating Corteva and SpinCo is expected to be completed in the second half of 2026.

Corteva was formed in 2018 as the agriculture-focused subsidiary of DowDuPont, following the merger of the two companies. Corteva was spun-off as its own entity in 2019.

Your next read: Fertilizer Decisions: Balance Costs, Yields and Sustainability

Breaking Down EPA's New Action Plan for Insecticides

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 17:59:59 GMT

In the trio of Endangered Species Act (ESA) enforcement regulations — herbicide, insecticide and fungicide — the industry now has two of the three to consider.

The final herbicide rule was released in 2024, and just yesterday EPA released its final insecticide rule. This comes after the draft insecticide rule was first released in July 2024, and the final rule takes into account the public comments provided during the comment period.

These EPA regulations are a response by the agency to enforce ESA at the agency level rather than through litigation and the court system.

As new insecticides are registered and existing products are re-registered via the FIFRA process, they will need to comply to the new rule. Unlike the herbicide final strategy already being applied to the label for BASF’s Liberty Ultra, the industry does not have a product to look to as it applies to the insecticide rule, yet.

“Late yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final Endangered Species Act (ESA) Insecticide Strategy. The Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA) plans to thoroughly review the proposal and provide feedback to the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP), addressing any questions or concerns that may arise,” says Richard Gupton, senior vide president of public policy and counsel for the Agricultural Retailers Association. “At first glance, it appears that the agency is considering the input from impacted agricultural stakeholders, which is encouraging. We will gain a clearer understanding once new labels are registered, and we can observe whether commercial applicators and farmers are afforded the necessary flexibility to utilize these products without facing undue regulatory burdens or additional operating costs.”

3 Steps Behind the Rule

Step 1

Establishes the potential for population-level impacts to the listed species as not likely, low, medium, or high. The low, medium, and high categories indicate a potential concern for population-level impacts that may need mitigation

Step 2

Identifies levels of mitigations that reduce spray drift and runoff/erosion to non-target habitats (e.g., low impacts would be addressed with fewer mitigations than medium or high potential impacts). EPA developed menus that identify mitigations that the Agency has determined to be effective at reducing spray drift and runoff/erosion in different parts of the country.

Step 3

Applies the mitigations by geography, crop type, etc. In those cases, EPA would specify the mitigations on the general pesticide product label. In other cases, mitigations may only apply in geographically specific areas (referred to as Pesticide Use Limitation Areas or PULAs). For geographically specific mitigations, the pesticide labeling would include a direction for the user to access EPA’s Bulletins Live! Two (BLT) website to determine whether they are in an area that requires mitigation.

Mitigation Efforts

Similar to the herbicide rule, retailers and farmers can expect to calculate necessary mitigation efforts including spray drift and runoff/erosion considerations.

Per the Final Insecticide Strategy, farmers and retailers can expect EPA is working to:

develop a process to qualify individual conservation programs that could achieve 9 mitigation points
reconsider using descriptions of protected areas or habitat, as opposed to (or to supplement) the descriptions of managed areas (e.g., what is not a protected area) in the Final Insecticide Strategy.
Develop refined Pesticide Use Limitation Area (PULA) maps2 to limit the spatial extent of off-target mitigations to specific areas to protect listed species and to minimize impacts to applicators
continue to work with stakeholders to evaluate drift-reducing adjuvants as a mitigation measure for insecticides.
work with stakeholders to identify additional mitigation options including potential offset opportunities for insecticides and other types of pesticides.
develop a mobile-friendly application tool for growers and other applicators that provides efficiencies in compiling the label information and helps pesticide users consider their options and understand how their current practices, location, and field properties relate to any required mitigations.

Study compares modes of action against chili thrips

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:49:43 GMT

Attune Agriculture, a hydrocolloid-based agricultural products producer, says results from a new study conducted on strawberries show that only focusing on pests does not always equate to what ultimately matters most for growers: more yield.

While chili thrips have become more difficult pests to control in strawberries, many growers use chemical and organic rotations to fight the pest.

Attune Agriculture said it evaluated its Entrapment insecticide, which is a new class of insecticides that uses a physical mode of action to control pests, against a standard organic and standard conventional rotation at the Florida Ag Research facility in Thonotosassa, Fla.

The trial with Entrapment and the organic rotation were comparable in most evaluated categories, and tough the conventional rotation was the most effective at pest control, there was a difference in total marketable yield, the company said in a news release.

Attune Agriculture said the Entrapment rotation produced 195 more pounds of marketable strawberries per acre than the organic rotation, which calculates to about $912 more per acre. The conventional program produced 234 pounds less than the Entrapment rotation.

The company said the Entrapment rotation is 16% more economical in cost than the organic rotation, bringing the total economic impact to an extra $969 per acre for the grower. Compared to the conventional rotation, the economic impact is an extra $1,072 per acre.

“This study confirms what we have heard anecdotally from our growers — that yield is often increased with the addition of Attune products, even in cases where traditional factors used to measure control, such as insect counts, do not seem dramatically different,” said Ed Quattlebaum, director of product development at Attune Agriculture. “Plant health is multi-dimensional and complex. This study shows that Entrapment not only provided comparable insect control, it also impacted the overall health of the plant, resulting in a higher yield than either the chemical or organic rotations.”

Want to curb climate change? Buy less-than-perfect produce and go easy on pesticides, researchers say

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 23:04:51 GMT

Year after year, a steady rise of extreme weather events causes farmers, distributors and food retailers to scramble to deliver food from farm to grocery aisle. Meanwhile, growers and produce industry leaders grapple with how to sustainably grow food in the face of a changing climate.

The drum beat of climate change is becoming harder to ignore.

Global food systems account for about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. While many climate-smart agriculture methods focus on conservation tillage and regenerative soil health practices, the Pesticide Action Network believes that no-till solutions alone do not solve agriculture’s emissions problem.

“The overwhelming majority of pesticides are derived from petroleum, meaning they’re ultimately derived from fossil fuels, and we refer to them as petrochemicals,” Asha Sharma, PAN North America’s organizing co-director and report co-author, told The Packer.

Related news: California’s sustainable pesticide road map: What it is and why it matters

In a recent report, “Pesticides and Climate Change: A Vicious Cycle,” the international coalition makes the case that reducing use of fossil fuel-derived, synthetic pesticides is a critical piece to the puzzle to mitigate climate change with agricultural practices.

The case to include pesticide reduction in climate solutions

In the analysis, PAN lays out its case that reliance on synthetic pesticides contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and, compounding the issue, also makes existing farming and ranching systems more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

It’s a negative feedback loop, or “vicious cycle,” that will only worsen unless farmers and ranchers make changes to how they grow food, according to the recent PAN report.

What can the fresh produce industry do in the face of this problem? PAN suggests the solution is twofold. First, the produce industry needs to embrace less-than-perfect fruits and vegetables from growers. Second, growers need to embrace agroecological farming methods and lessen dependence on synthetic pesticides.

Shifting beauty standards in fruits and vegetables

“The power of procurement is huge,” Sharma said.

If produce buyers rewarded farmers for quality products, while shifting expectations around what is and is not a quality marker when it comes to judging fruits and vegetables, it would completely change the game, according to the PAN report’s co-authors.

This shift in what’s acceptable would empower growers to ease up on applying synthetic pesticides that promise blemish-free fruits and vegetables.

“One of the driving factors behind the continued use of pesticide is the perception that that the use of pesticides will guarantee that you’ve got beautiful fruits and vegetables,” Margaret Reeves, Ph.D., and senior scientist and report co-author at PAN North America, told The Packer.

There’s intense pressure from the market to have beautiful, perfect products, even though appearance doesn’t say much about quality of the product, she added.

“The market could have a powerful message and influence in shifting the consumers mentality about what’s acceptable,” Reeves continued. “The produce industry could go a long way in shifting that consumer mentality about what’s acceptable.”

Allowing blemishes and tolerating a small amount of visible pest pressure on sought-after fruits and vegetables would dramatically lessen agricultural dependence on synthetic pesticides.

“There are rigorous standards that farmers have to abide by when it comes to quality, appearance and quantity, usually under contracts,” Sharma said. “Being able to work with farmers who are farming organically or with agroecological practices, [buyers must] make sure standards aren’t leaving folks out.”

Reducing pests through ecological farming practices

On the other side of the coin, breaking out of the pesticide dependence cycle for growers looks like embracing new farming practices that focus on preventing pests instead of eradicating them, according to PAN’s recent report.

“Solutions like agroecology focus on changing our whole philosophy and system of farming, working with nature rather than against it and minimizing the use of synthetic inputs that include pesticides and fertilizers,” Sharma said.

The agroecological approach is an ecosystem-based approach where the emphasis is on crop and system health and preventing conditions conducive to pest problems, Reeves said.

What’s more, these farming techniques rely on integrated pest management strategies, systems-based approaches and ecological principles that minimize the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

“That’s why diversity is so important in crop rotations,” Reeves said. “It’s not completely outside of what many producers consider, but this approach makes the agricultural system one that is healthy, vigorous, abundant. It prevents pest problems rather than waiting until the pests are there and then asking, ‘How do you kill them with pesticides or other technologies?’”

Finding natural solutions through trial and error

Rob Faux, an Iowa farmer and PAN’s communications manager, has had success farming using agroecological growing methods firsthand.

“We keep learning, and we keep adjusting year after year. We just keep getting better at it,” Faux told The Packer. “There are two principles in agroecology that we very much adhere to, and that’s embracing complexity and encouraging diversity.”

For Faux, complexity means not just farming with a systems-based approach, but also incorporating more types of plants in his crop rotation. For instance, to combat the Colorado potato beetle on his farm, Faux added diversity into his potato fields, alternating green beans and bush beans next to the potato fields.

“That, of course, means that you’re managing a system that is a little more complex,” he said. “With lots of trial and error and a few studies, we figured out what works on our farm. Now, we don’t worry about the Colorado potato beetle most of the time.”

How the produce industry can support agroecological farming

To support farmers who are using agroecological growing practices, Faux urges produce buyers to seek out more small, diversified farms.

“To make this work we must have the buyers willing to accept a little bit of the burden of the complexity. Not all of it, but some of it,” he said.

While not as simple as purchasing from one big supplier that grows or sources vast quantities of one product, Faux believes supporting smaller growers who can rotate fields and grow several types of crops is part of solving the larger issue of mitigating climate change in agriculture.

Not only does agroecology lessen farmers’ need to apply synthetic pesticides, according to PAN’s report authors, it also centers decision-making with the farmer, who can tackle pest problems directly with boots on the ground.

“Importantly, the aspect of agroecology that doesn’t exist in solutions like precision agriculture is centering the decision-making power of the people most impacted by conventional or industrial agriculture,” Sharma said. “The farmers, farmworkers, indigenous people, rural communities, and really trying to build their decision-making power in forming the types of agricultural systems that we really want to see.”

Read the full report, “Pesticides and Climate Change: A Vicious Cycle.”

Why a New App Designed by Iowa State Could Be a Game Changer to Identify and Diagnose Unwanted Pests

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 02:09:49 GMT

In fields across Iowa, unwanted pests are on the prowl year after year, but a new app could help farmers not only detect which pests are in their field, but also give insights on how to treat the field if it’s a yield-robbing pest.

“It is the first of its kind in the sense we are trying to cater the needs of farmer by putting these management practices or strategies linked with insect detection,” says Arti Singh, assistant professor in Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University.

The main goal is to make pest management simpler, which is why the app is a one-stop shop that first identifies the pest, but also gives management advice by recommending on next steps.

“They go into a field, they take a picture, and in real time, it tells them which insect it is, whether it’s a beneficial insect or if it’s a harmful insect,” she adds. “It also gives them the scientific name and common name of the insect.”

The app is already able to identify 2,000 different insects today, but by early next year, it will have the capability detecting and diagnosing more than 4,000 pests. The growth of the app’s capability is being driven by the power of artificial intelligence.

“We use a concept called deep learning, which is the subset of artificial intelligence, where we collect these images, and we pass it through a network, if you will, and the network is essentially extracting all different kinds of features of this of the images and then making a decision on which insect class it belongs to,” says Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, professor associate chair for Research Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University.

In order to double the amount of insects it can detect by early next year, millions of images will need to be collected, a process that’s already underway.

“I think the large amount of data that we have been collecting, both from sensors, from images, from drones and from citizen scientists, has provided a wonderful opportunity for us to train new kinds of artificial intelligence models on this data so that we can facilitate decision support and enable farmers to do what they do better, faster and easier way,” says Ganapathysubramanian.

While creating a pest identification has a goal of simplicity for the end user, the data on the front end can be noisy.

“Different people use different kinds of cameras, different people use different kinds of phones, at different locations in different resolutions,” says Ganapathysubramanian. “So, how do you account for all those things while you design insect detection app is something that we have to deal with.”

Another challenge is the sheer amount of data that the app will need to process. Ganapathysubramanian says some pests will have more than 100,000 images, while other insects may only have 20 photos, and many of those pests have similar characteristics.

“There are also some beetles that looks very, very similar, but they actually belong to different class, so how do you distinguish between two similar looking images, but they actually belong to wildly different classes where one class could be a beneficial pest insect and the other class could be actually a pest, or perhaps an invasive species.”

While artificial intelligence is key, the human element is still a vital piece of the puzzle. However, the sheer amount of data creates a challenge with sorting through all the data.

“You have lot of images, it takes an entomologist, actually to decide what it each individual image, which class it belongs to, but if we have 20 million images like these, it’s difficult for an entomologist to go and look at and rank and read each individual image,” explains Ganapathysubramanian.

The app will help farmers solve pest problems not only today, but also tomorrow, as deep learning continues to evolve with the pests and diseases farmers face.

“We don’t know about these new crops which insect pests or diseases can be a problem, says Singh. “If we have this library of insect pests, and we can use the smartphone app to identify in a timely way and mitigate, I think this will be a game changer for farmers.”

While the app is off to a strong start, the researchers say their work is far from over, as the technology could soon harvest solutions across the U.S. And the researchers say it’s because artificial intelligence, data science and the large amount of data that they’re collecting, are coming together to provide real-time insight and solutions for farmers.

New Changes amid Fast-Growing Biological Market

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 05:58:35 GMT

The biologicals market is not the last frontier in agricultural development, but it certainly has proven to to be the next frontier, with the world market now worth an estimated $1 billion and growing an estimated 10% to 15% annually. Novozymes , the maker of several biofertility and biocontrol crop protection products, is the latest company to make a major investment in biological with its acquisition of Texas-based Natural Industries Inc.

Natural Industries Inc. has focused on the research and development of a particular type of soil microorganism called “Streptomyces,” which are thought to have properties that can help control a variety of fungi, bacteria, nematodes, insects and weeds. Thomas Videbæk, head of BioBusiness at Novozymes, says he hopes the acquisition will strengthen the company’s presence in the biologicals market.

“Novozymes has long-term ambitions to be a key player in this market,” he says. “Natural Industries Inc. brings a wealth of knowledge in the biocontrol area. The company has a proven portfolio of products, new pipeline opportunities and good market coverage for high-value crops in key regions of the U.S. The acquisition is a good example on how we can grow and utilize our platform and leading position in this area as well as accelerate innovation.”

Terms and conditions of the acquisition were not disclosed, and it does not affect Novozymes’ financial guidance for 2012.

In other biocontrol news, Biopreparáty, spol. s r.o. and Gowan Company, LLC recently signed a commercial agreement for exclusive distribution of Polyversum, a biofungicide that company officials hope will appeal to both organic and conventional growers seeking unique IPM and sustainability solutions for their operations.

“Polyversum represents a new opportunity to further develop our Gowan BioRational portfolio that we started a decade ago,” says Salvatore Strano, product manager for Gowan. Gowan is now “developing several plant extract products coming from our joint venture with EcoFlora Agro. We are committed to bringing reliable and efficacious solutions to conventional and organic growers worldwide,” Strano says.