On the horizon

Dozens of new chemical technologies are being introduced to keep your customers' lawns weed-free and green. So we asked manufacturers about the products and why they were produced. Here's the lowdown on the new and updated products being released.
 

Spread it & Forget it Season Long fertilizer is now in its second year so it's no longer new.  However, based on the success of the turf product, there is a new Spread it & Forget it 14-14-14 General Purpose Landscape fertilizer that is launching in late 2011/early 2012.

More and more lawn and landscape professionals are caring for trees shrubs, and landscapes on client properties. Plants thrive on balanced nutrition, and each and every granule of this new fertilizer has the same amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium so plants always get even, consistent feeding all season long. Re-applying fertilizer multiple times per year is labor intensive. – Bryan Gooch, marketing manager, direct solutions, Agrium Advanced Technologies
 

Disarm G granular. That's been on the market for a couple of years, but we are changing the package size to a 25-pounder. The reason for that is so that lawn care people can buy it and put it on their truck – 25 pounds would cover about 10,000 sq. ft. It's a smaller unit price and easier to handle. Previously it was a 40-pounder, which (customers) told us was too big.

Another thing we are doing is repositioning Disarm M which is a sprayable fungicide, that contains fluoxastrobin and myclobutanil, and we are repositioning that to target the lawn care market.

Next year we'll be registering amicarbazone, which is an herbicide called Xonerate. Our focus the first year out will be golf course type turf but this does have some applications in residential turf as well, but we just won't be focusing on it in 2012 (the plan is to wait until 2013 or 2014). Right now we don't think that at the cost we have tagged to it, it would not be cost effective.

Lawn care people wouldn't buy it. What we've got to do is figure out a way to get it to the market cheaper and we are working on that.

In residential turf, its strong point is annual bluegrass control. For residential turf that's not as important as golf course turf.

But then it also controls a number of weeds like spurge, henbit, basically winter annual broadleaves, it's outstanding on. But we have a price issue, and we have to figure out how to get the price down for that market before we can push it. – Douglas Houseworth, manager of turf and ornamental development, Arysta LifeScience

We essentially have introduced in the past 24 months two new herbicides. The first one is Celsius. This was introduced in the fall of 2009. It's a selective post-emergent herbicide for the control of weeds in southern turfgrass – both grasses and broadleaves. This product is tolerant on Bermudagrass, St. Augustinegrass, zosiya and centipedegrass, the most important being centipedegrass and St. Augustinegrass.

LCOs can look forward to a steady stream of new products this fall and in 2012.

Specticle is a product that we launched in the fall of 2010. This is actually a pre-emergent herbicide for control of grasses and broadleaves, again in the warm-season grasses. Ultimately, the two products complement each other very well as part of an integrated pest management or weed management program. There are very low use rates with Specticle, so from an environmental standpoint there is less active ingredient being into the environment. It is packaged in water-soluble packaging, so you have very low worker exposure when mixing the product up. It doesn't stain. A lot of other pre-emergent herbicides are yellow in color so they leave a yellow residue behind. This product is clear and low odor. Basically, you could make the application and nobody would know you were there.

Specticle was a little bit unique in that we knew that there was a need for a new pre-emergent herbicide that had a broader spectrum. That product was actually in development from 2004-2010, doing all the things that we needed to do to get the registration.

Along the same lines as Celsius, it just does things the old chemistries on the marketplace do not do. – Matthew Bradley, marketing product manager for herbicides, Bayer

Working with our formulator partner PBI/Gordon, we are developing liquid combinations that will contain penoxsulam, the active ingredient in LockUp specialty herbicide. It will offer broad-spectrum postemergence weed control for both cool- and warm-season turf. We currently have several granular formulations in the marketplace, but the liquid would provide lawn care operators additional flexibility. In addition, Dow AgroSciences has a series of herbicides in development that have potential development for the turf and ornamental market. We are also exploring concepts for development of broad-spectrum herbicides based on current actives.

Penoxsulam was developed as a replacement for atrazine. We were looking to develop a postemergence active that would offer comparable efficacy with low use rates and a favorable environmental profile. We found that when you combine penoxsulam with 2,4-D and dicamba, you get better activity on clover than the standard granule three-ways in the market. LockUp is registered under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Reduced Risk Pesticide Initiative. When compared with other herbicide options, LockUp is very effective at extremely low use rate (0.02 to 0.06 lb. a.i./A), which helps decrease the overall pesticide load in the environment. – Dan Loughner, business development leader, Dow AgroSciences

This year we are debuting Blindside herbicide, which controls sedges and tough broadleaves like dollarweed, doveweed and buttonweed on virtually all warm-season turf types, including St. Augustinegrass. What's unique about Blindside is that it gives results within a week as well as extended soil activity, so there is less weed pressure in subsequent years. Also, it can be applied in warmer months without harming turf.

This fall, we will follow up our new Talstar EZ featuring Verge Granule Technology (see Ballistics Bring About A Better Granule, pg. 17) with Talstar XTRA on Verge. This will bring extremely fast and long-term control of fire ants and other pests but on a new type of granule that is virtually dust-free and non-staining.

All of our products are based on feedback from our customers. They told us they needed a broad-spectrum herbicide for warm-season grasses that works fast and can be applied all season long so that's why we developed Blindside. They also told us they loved how fast Talstar XTRA works, but that they need it on a broadcast granule. – Adam Manwarren, product manager of turf and ornamental, FMC Professional Solutions

In 2012, we expect to have our new Zylam Liquid Systemic Insecticide available. This product contains dinotefuran and is the only product of its kind. It is the latest generation neonicotinoid insecticide. It will be offered to the professional lawn and landscape and golf markets. This product was developed to meet the demand for a fast acting, fully systemic insecticide. – Jim Goodrich, product sales specialist, PBI/Gordon

Edgeless turf growth regulator integrates patented plant growth regulator technology designed to reduce the hassle and frequency of string trimming on both warm- and cool-season turfgrasses for up to eight weeks. Edgeless is applied as a banded spray application wherever string trimming or edging of turfgrass is required such as along fence lines, around trees, posts, gravestones, posts and mailboxes.

Caliente herbicide is a broadleaf and grassy post-emergent herbicide. Caliente provides turfgrass safety and contains Octane inside, resulting in faster kill of a wide range of broadleaf weeds.

SePRO is committed to providing products that help the lawn care operator and lawn maintenance professional more effectively manage their time and labor costs. Edgeless turf growth regulator will reduce the frequency of string trimming allowing this labor to be reallocated to other tasks. – Roger Storey, vice president, turf and ornamental, SePRO Corp.

First is Tenacity herbicide, which we just launched into the LCO market this April. It's a unique product especially when it comes to seeding because Tenacity can be applied before seeding, after seeding or at the same time as seeding. You can use it in a total bare-ground situation like a new home or selective overseeding instead of glyphosate. The nice thing about this product is it really helps the LCO deliver a better looking lawn sooner because they don't have to go to that bare ground, they can overseed and the new grass that is coming in then doesn't have to compete with the weeds for water and nutrients. In addition to the seeding use, it controls more than 46 weeks, including nimblewill, which is a really important one in some geographies.

The other new product would be Headway G fungicide, and we've just launched that this month, so we'll actually start selling that in October with the start of the new program year. It's a granular product, which many LCOs prefer – they really like granular products. Headway G is very similar (to Heritage G) in the sense that it controls a broad spectrum of diseases including brown patch, red thread, summer patch and more than 15 other diseases, but it also includes dollar spot, which is a big problem in certain areas. It's the broadest spectrum product that we have. The real benefit of this for an LCO is that the technician does not have to worry is he properly diagnosing exactly the right disease.

These products are great examples of things where there is a lot of thought that has gone into helping these products help the LCO be more successful, and help them make money with these products with the business model as well as the agronomics. – Pat Willenbrock, brand manager, Syngenta

Ballistics testing for LCOs

Ballistics testing is usually reserved for crime shows, not the lawn care industry. But two companies – chemical firm FMC Corp., and minerals formulator Oil-Dri Corp. – recently joined together to create a new type of granule using CSI-style lab simulations and field tests.

Their goal was to create a granule that was dust free, uniform in shape and quick to disintegrate. Five years of work resulted in the new Talstar EZ Featuring Verge Granule Technology, a pyrethroid-based granular insecticide that controls more than 75 surface feeding insects.

"With this version of Talstar EZ, we haven't changed the active ingredient (0.2% bifenthrin), but the formulation does a better job of protecting operators from exposure and provides phenomenal ballistics," says Adam Manwarren, product manager at FMC Professional Solutions. "It applies evenly, disperses rapidly and creates almost zero dust."
 

Uniformity. During development, the first challenge was to ensure each granule was extruded with the same size and shape. Uniformity reduces application time and eliminates waste since fewer passes are needed. Uniformity also ensures that the active ingredient is evenly distributed. Since larger particles tend to fly farther than smaller ones, testing involved both lab and field simulations where the granule flight patterns were examined.
 

Eliminating dust. To test for dust, Oil-Dri positioned a mannequin behind a commercial spreader set up on blocks and ran it continuously. Using EPA meters, they measured the dust immediately released from the spreader. They also poured the granule from a height of three feet and used photography to capture what residue was emitted. Last, they visually inspected the mannequin's white pants. In all tests, the Talstar EZ on Verge produced significantly less dust on the equipment, the tires and the operator.
 

Rapid release. The last study examined how quickly the new granule could break down in water. The Verge granules fully disintegrated into microparticles within a minute of being watered in. This meant that the product is in the soil and invisible to the customer almost immediately.

Despite the many hundreds of hours of testing, for most lawn care applicators, it comes down to performance. So far the industry is responding favorably to the new innovation.

Robert Windish, owner of New Jersey's Fairway Green has been using the Verge granule for tick control on turf and in shrubbery. Windish likes that the product's low dust and low odor are better for his technicians, and he says the granule's uniform size makes it easier to spread. "It's just a really clean granule," he says. – FMC Professional Solutions