Syngenta Bioline responds to market developments

Syngenta Bioline’s Head of Development Richard GreatRex signals the retail sector’s drive towards reduced or zero residues in products as one of the major market influences today. “We see a move towards a preference for integrated pest management and away from purely chemical approaches.” Mainly focussing on cut flowers and covered crops, Syngenta Bioline has done a lot of work in soft fruit crops in recent years. “More and more soft fruits are grown under protection to extend the season and this encourages pest problems. “Growers also experience resistance problems with some of the chemical solutions and other agents restrict them in terms of re-entry and pre-harvest limitations during the harvest season. From those aspects, again the need for integrated pest control arises. And this is what Syngenta Bioline wants to offer growers: the best combined solution.
Traditionally, Syngenta Bioline has held a strong position in the invertebrate biocontrol agents for protected salad vegetables and this is still an area of many innovations. A new product based on the predator mite Montdorensis is currently being developed.  The mite is used to control thrips and whitefly in several crops such as cucumber, aubergine, pepper or gerbera.  “We recently made a breakthrough in the production system allowing us to produce this product in commercial numbers.” The product is on the market in the Netherlands already and currently going through the registration process in France and Spain too. Richard GreatRex signals that the registration process is a difficult one, but once handled with a rational approach, by no means an impossible one. MW