A new adjuvant for the sustainable application of crop protection products
Adjuvants are products that increase crop protection product (CPP) efficacy or modify the spray solution. This helps the spray program to reach its true potential without losing significant activity due to environmental conditions. MasterLock® is the latest Villa adjuvant launched in 2023 in tree crops and vines to achieve these goals. The results in the first year of commercial use have been encouraging and we believe that it will revolutionise crop protection in tree crops in the next few seasons.
What does MasterLock® do?
MasterLock® contains a unique plant-based oil and a surfactant (spreader). The plant oil acts as a deposition agent, increasing coverage and canopy penetration, while decreasing drift and evaporation of fine spray droplets. The surfactant decreases droplet bounce while increasing droplet spreading and absorption of systemic products. It also assists to create an environment in the spray droplet residual that is conducive to increased efficacy of contact products.
Efficacy advantages?
One of the cornerstones for effective disease and pest control, is coverage. The more spray droplets that reach the target, the more active ingredient that is available to do its job. There is also less CPP that drifts away, never reaches the target, or is released into the environment. After droplets reach the leaves and fruit of orchard crops, it is important that they are retained on all parts of the trees by reducing droplet bounce. Droplets that are retained, then need to spread out, to further increase coverage. It is a numbers game, and the more active ingredient that is retained on the target, the more chance for effective control.
After increasing coverage, surfactants and oils play a further role on the plant to increase the activity of both contact and systemic products. This ensures effective control, higher yields, and improved fruit quality. MasterLock® helps with the deposition, retention and coverage processes and plays an active role on leaf and fruit surfaces after application. More CPP on the target in an active spray deposit and less chemical in the environment, means that the application is done in an effective and sustainable manner.
A further MasterLock® spin-off is the reduced chance of resistance development to certain active ingredients. By increasing the coverage on trees, and improving efficacy, pests and diseases have a reduced chance of developing resistance ensuring that effective active ingredients will be available to the grower for much longer. Obviously, the use of MasterLock® is not a guarantee to achieve this, but it will help to delay resistance by improving coverage and efficacy.
Productivity advantages
Many growers use excessive water volumes to ensure that enough active ingredient reaches the target. This is particularly true in crops like citrus, where diseases such as black spot are an issue. This approach is logical because growers do not want to take any chances with important diseases. However, if it is possible to deliver and retain more spray droplets on the target with MasterLock®, then lower water volumes with similar efficacy are indeed conceivable. This opens a wealth of opportunities to apply CPPs more effectively and sustainably. A test done in Letsitele earlier this year proved that reduction of excessive water volume was possible when using MasterLock®. The deposition at the lower water volume with MasterLock® was more effective than the higher water volume without MasterLock®. However, please take care to reduce water volume responsibly. Therefore, this is only possible if the grower is applying an excessive water volume. This must only be done in collaboration with the chemical distributor representative and a Villa agronomist using MasterLock® and a Villa spray programme.
A huge advantage of applying a lower water volume with MasterLock® is timesaving. This can be achieved by faster tractor speed to get through orchards more quickly. It is not only the time spent while physically applying the spray mixture, but also the time it takes to drive to the filling point and back. This enables the tractor and sprayer to be used more productively to get through the orchards quicker.
Another advantage of using MasterLock® is water-saving. South Africa is a water-scarce country and any saving on water is a sustainable advantage. In the same test at Letsitele, a water reduction of only 11% with MasterLock® resulted in a reduction of 1 090 litres per hectare. This doesn’t sound much at first, but it adds up as the area increases to a staggering 1 090 000 litres on a thousand hectares!
Decreasing excessive water volume when MasterLock® is applied, means declining use of CPPs. Therefore, the next advantage is less drift and vapours of CPPs released into the environment. The pressure on growers to apply CPPs responsibly is immense, and MasterLock® is a means to keep the product on the trees where it belongs.
These advantages are vitally important from a cost and environmental perspective. However, there are also many other advantages like savings on diesel usage, mechanisation costs and other costs involved with the tractor and sprayer.
Dr. Brian de Villiers & Lourens Steytler
