New Adjuvant Approved for California Fungicide Use on Specialty Crops
August 9, 2021 Attune Agriculture, the leader in developing performance based agricultural products using hydrocolloid technology, announces that Ampersand adjuvant is now approved for use with fungicides in California. Ampersand is now officially approved for use with herbicides, insecticides, miticides, nutrients, and fungicides in all 50 states.
Ampersand adjuvant is not a surfactant. Using hydrocolloid technology, typically reserved for applications in the food industry, Ampersand works by controlling the water in the spray tank. This allows Ampersand to guide spray tank droplets, starting at the nozzle stage, all the way to the leaf’s surface.
Unlike typical spreader/stickers, Ampersand is formulated to create high-volume droplets. Ampersand’s droplet control, and evaporation protection properties, allows sprays with Ampersand to last twice as long on the leaf as leading surfactants. The result is 3 times more spray to the leaf, 2 times the absorption potential, and 4 times the wash-off resistance. Ampersand is able to boost performance for crop inputs even in high temperature/low humidity climates.
Ampersand has been field tested with top fungicides, such as Quadris Top, Heritage, Cease, Mettle, and Rally 40WSP. Trials included cucumber powdery mildew on cucumber, grape mildew on ‘pinot noir’ grapes, and powdery mildew on butternut squash. The average control for the fungicides alone was 52.6%. When the fungicides were tank mixed with Ampersand, performance was increased to an average of 70.5%. Fungicide performance can be increased by 34% simply by adding Ampersand as a tank mix partner.
“We are finally able to offer our California growers the full breadth of Ampersand’s abilities across the entire range of crop inputs,” Greg Andon, CEO of Attune Agriculture, says. “The power of Ampersand is that there is no need to change your existing spray program. It simply boosts the performance of all actives growers are already using.”
