There are many types of ‘biologicals’ – fungicides, insecticides and pesticides. At Bayer, we define them as crop protection or crop efficiency products where the active principle is a micro-organism, beneficial insect or compound of natural origin.
Bayer’s focus
Our biological crop protection solutions occur naturally. They are based on fungi, bacteria, plant extracts or minerals that are well characterised and originally isolated from the environment.
Current Bayer biological products are FLiPPER, Sonata, Serenade ASO and Contans WG.
Why biologicals
It’s becoming harder to improve yields.
Today, around 40% of global production is lost to weeds, insects and plant diseases.
Climate change, and particularly adverse weather, is a challenge to yields, while water scarcity and limited arable land threaten to reduce food supply and security.
In parallel, growers have a shrinking ‘pipeline’ of new crop protection products to draw on, due to increasingly stringent legislation and extended development cycles.
What biologicals can do
Biologicals are unlike conventional plant protection products – and that’s the whole point. They’re designed to work together by targeting pathogens or insects through different modes of action.
For growers, biologicals support sustainable agriculture practices and food production systems with excellent integrated pest management and environmental profiles. In addition, they can provide extended protection for fruit, vegetables and – in some cases – arable crops.
Help manage resistance
With entirely different modes of action from conventional chemicals, biologicals offer new strategies for resistance management.
Increase overall crop protection efficacy
By using biologicals in cropping programmes with conventional chemistries, and by taking advantage of multi-site and single-site modes of action, it’s possible to enhance disease population management and resistance management.
Expand your options
As well as resistance management, biologicals can help with sustainable cropping, IPM compatibility, disease and pest control, plant health and yield – and even more:
- Application timings can be more flexible, easing workload. There are short re-entry or pre-harvest intervals, sometimes none at all
- Biocontrol agents are safe and effective for operators, beneficials and consumers
- If you need to reduce chemical use while achieving higher marketable yields, biologicals may be the answer
Provide reassurance
With biologicals, you’ll more easily satisfy the ever-lower residue requirements of regulators and purchasers across the food chain, including those who have implemented stringent quality and stewardship targets. When used with traditional crop protection products, biologicals can reduce residues at harvest.
You’ll also satisfy consumers who focus on quality nutrition, sources of healthy vitamins and general well-being and increasingly demand safe, sustainable production of fruit and vegetables.
Bayer and biologicals
With more than 20 years’ experience in biologicals, we recognise that growers can no longer think in terms of individual crop protection products, but sustainable, integrated solutions.