Bayer CropScience to launch eight new ais in Japan

Bayer CropScience K.K., which falls under the Bayer CropScience subgroup of Germany’s Bayer AG, has eight new pesticide active ingredients in the development pipeline on track for launch on the Japanese market from now until 2016, in addition to its recently registered isotianil, a rice-blast fungicide.

The company, which reported 36.3 bn yen ($402 mn) in sales in 2009, intends to expand its market share by introducing a stream of new products geared toward the needs of users. It also plans to widen the application scopes of its existing products.

isotianil, whose development was advanced in collaboration with Sumitomo Chemicals, will be sold under the name of Routine. It acts by stimulating the plant’s natural defense mechanisms, and offers long-term residual efficacy and effectiveness with a small application amount. The new products in the pipeline include ethofumesate, a sugar-beet herbicide that has been submitted for registration and is expected to go on sale in Japan in 2011, and spirotetramat, a ketoenol insecticide that is anticipated to reach the domestic market in 2012 and to become a major seller. An application has been filed for spirotetramat’s registration as a gardening insecticide. Two herbicides, two fungicides and an insecticide are among the other new products.

Sales will start this fiscal year of the company’s tefuryltrione, a herbicide given the AVH-301 development code, in the two pesticide formulations Possible, in which it will be blended with mefenacet, and Bodyguard, in which it will be blended with fentrazamide. Developed jointly with the National Federation of Agriculture Co-operative Associations, or Zen-Noh, and Hokko Chemical Industry, tefuryltrione was registered this February and is expected to generate strong sales.

Bayer CropScience K.K.’s competitor Syngenta Japan will begin selling this November formulations for paddy use that include mesotrione, its recently registered triketone herbicide that is effective against Ricefield Bulrush as well as annual broadleaf weeds that had built up sulfonylurea resistance. Approval has been received to market Apirotop MX 1 kg granules, a four-component paddy-herbicide formulation of mesotrione, pyriftalid, pretilachlor and bensurlfuron, and Callisto, a corn and feed-corn herbicide with mesotrione as the sole ingredient. Mesotrione-based formulations are regarded as core paddy-herbicide products, with peak application area of 300,000 hectares out of Japan’s total paddy-field area of 1,600,000 hectares.