Johnnie Roberts, a 45-year veteran of the agrochemical formulation industry with Helena, has witnessed firsthand the dramatic rise of adjuvant use in agriculture. Roberts calls adjuvants “one of the last art forms in chemistry,” for many of the reasons below.

In 1976, not quite 50 years ago, only three herbicides (Roundup, atrazine, and paraquat) required the addition of a tank-mix adjuvant for optimal performance. In 2022, there are more than 1,000 pesticide labels requiring an adjuvant and more than 2,500 adjuvants from which to choose. According to the Council of Producers and Distributors of Agrotechnology (CPDA), choosing the right adjuvant can impact the performance of the product by up to 50%.

“What is going to drive the adjuvant industry in the future is the part that is interesting to me,” Roberts, CPDA Director of Education-Adjuvant Chemistry, tells AgriBusiness Global DIRECT.

“We went from where the active ingredients were driving the technology to now, where it’s going to be the application technology that drives it.”

The net result of this evolution, of course, is efficiency and precision. “We’ll look back on what we’re doing today — broadcast spreading large volumes over the acre — and it will seem so crude”…Read More

Click here to view recent ARA CPDA Webinar “Adjuvant Advantage for the Sales Agronomist” featuring Johnnie Roberts, Director of Education – Adjuvant Chemistry.