About a dozen years ago, the reputation of biological fungicides wasn’t the best, as the effectiveness of these pesticides was simply not up to par. Today, an overwhelming majority of fresh produce growers still haven’t tried bio pesticides, due to lack of time to learn the mixing or biology involved.
STK is now launching the first ever hybrid fungicide in the United States and aims to convince growers they will not have to change a thing in their current operation, while still being able to massively lower the residue levels to meet the MRL standards that many markets in the EU and east Asia require these days.
According to Yair Nativ, Vice President of sales for STK, their hybrid fungicide should make it easy for growers to try out a biological fungicide with relative ease: “Making the jump towards biological fungicides is a leap for growers, as some still feel anything biological isn’t as effective as their current all-chemical solution. However, with the first-ever ‘hybrid’ fungicide, REGEV, we bring a product to the market that doesn’t require mixing or knowledge of biology and therefore is an immediate and sustainable solution to growers in order to bring residue levels down significantly. Regev contains tea tree oil and difenoconazole. Difenoconazole has a long history of successful use for disease control. However, tea tree oil is good by itself, so both components are providing disease control. The synergetic effect between the tea tree oil and the fungicide makes it work a lot better together, while the dual-mode-of-action is also great for resistance management.”
Launching in the United States
“As we were planning to launch Regev in the United States, the emergence of Covid did set us back a little bit,” says Eric Tedford, Field Research Manager for Summit Agro USA. “However, for the past two years we’ve been able to increase our research and collect lots of solid data to bring to potential clients. This means that we have an easier time of explaining things face-to-face, as we can show via the data that despite Regev being a hybrid fungicide, it’s very competitive compared to other products on the market. We’ve recently put in effort to speak with growers in the potato industry, as they deal with diseases like early blight and brown spot. Showing them field trial results and/or having them test Regev for themselves has allowed them to gain confidence in biological fungicides.”
In order to showcase what Regev can do, a website has been launched, where users can look up specific produces or diseases. The website then showcases the research results for the specific query: “In the United States there are many crops that could benefit from Regev, like pecans, almonds, grapes, potatoes, and sugar beets.”
With the launch of Regev in the United States, a milestone has been reached. However, there is also the ambition to launch the product in the other major markets, Nativ states. “For STK, there are three major markets in the world that we would like to launch Regev in: Europe, Brazil and the United States. Since we’re able to launch in the Unites States now, I feel this will be the most important market for our product for the foreseeable future. It’ll take much longer to get Regev approved in the other two regions, as in Brazil it takes about five years to get all the registrations done. For Europe, we’re talking at least five years, probably more, to get all the registrations past Brussels. However, growers are already using REGEV with great success in Israel, Serbia, the Philippines and most countries throughout Latin America.”
Working with Universities to collect data
Tedford has worked with universities for many years, but over the past two year the collaboration with these universities has really intensified. “In the past year alone, we’ve starting working with 33 new university scientists. These research experts are very important to us, as they have their own research plots and field days, as well as visibility trials. Since they also use competing products in their tests, trial visitors can see how Regev stacks up against the competition. Another benefit to us is these university scientists are impartial, so their interpretation of the results and recommendations to growers are objective.”
Tedford emphasizes, “In addition to the universities, we’ve been working directly with growers from all over the United States, from California, to New Jersey and Florida. Each have their own specialty crops and disease expertise and provide us with valuable data.”
Regev is now available in the United States and is sold exclusively through Helena Agri-Enterprises and Tenkoz member companies.
For more information:
Yair Nativ
STK
Email: yair@stk-ag.com
www.stk-ag.com