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Innovative active ingredient provides reliable weed protection for corn:
Launch of Soberan® planned for 2008
Monheim, July 8, 2008 - Bayer CropScience's active ingredient tembotrione has
been approved for use in Brazil. This means that the new corn herbicide
Soberan® (tembotrione + isoxadifen) can be launched in time for this year's
growing season. "Brazil is a strategically important market for Bayer
CropScience", commented Christophe Dumont, Head of the company's Strategic
Business Unit Herbicides. "The launch of Soberan® is intended to further expand
our leading position as a supplier of crop protection products."
Tembotrione, from the triketone chemical class, is already available
commercially in Hungary, Austria, Serbia and the United States under the brand
name Laudis®. Regulatory approval is expected to be granted in additional major
corn-growing countries in the course of this year.
The herbicidal compound tembotrione is a leaf-active substance that eliminates
the protection of chlorophyll against UV light in weeds. It is exceptionally
well tolerated by corn plants. Soberan® can be used in the post-emergence phase
to control a wide spectrum of weeds, including species that are difficult to
eliminate. The product combines rapid action with a user-friendly formulation
and good rain-fastness to offer farmers a number of major advantages over
conventional products.
Soberan® has the potential to become a new standard in conventional weed
control as it meets the highest requirements in terms of quality and yield. It
can be used in tank mixes, for example in combination with the established
product Atrazine. Soberan® is also extremely well suited for use in
herbicide-tolerant systems as an effective component in efficient resistance
management programs. Gerhard Bohne, Marketing Director of
Bayer CropScience in Brazil is confident about Soberan®, describing it as "an
innovative product for the local market that is adapted to the specific needs
of our customers in Brazil."
Brazil - the third-largest producer of corn in the world
Brazil produced around 51 million tons of corn in 2007, making it one of the
world's major corn producers after the United States and China. The area under
corn was expanded slightly last year and, according to the Brazilian Institute
of Geography and Statistics (IGBE), corn production is expected to reach 56.1
million tons this year.
The growing demand in the United States for conventional corn as an animal
feedstuff and globally as a raw material for the production of ethanol is
conferring ever greater importance on innovative crop protection products as a
way of safeguarding harvests. "Consumption has been outstripping production
since 2006 and global reserves of corn are diminishing", Christophe Dumont
explained. The main focus of Bayer CropScience activities in Brazil is
therefore research into and the development of new agrochemicals to safeguard
the quality of corn and to protect corn harvests.
Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of health
care, nutrition and high-tech materials. Bayer CropScience AG, a subsidiary of
Bayer AG with annual sales of about EUR 5.8 billion (2007), is one of the world'
s leading innovative crop science companies in the areas of crop protection,
non-agricultural pest control, seeds and plant biotechnology. The company
offers an outstanding range of products and extensive service backup for
modern, sustainable agriculture and for non-agricultural applications. Bayer
CropScience has a global workforce of about 17,800 and is represented in more
than 120 countries. This and further news is available at:
www.newsroom.bayercropscience.com
More information is available at www.bayercropscience.com
