September 1997, Volume 18 No. 3

Company News

A round-up of relevant industrial developments. More detail on many items can be found in AgBiotech News and Information, published monthly by CAB INTERNATIONAL.

Ecogen are transferring their emphasis from cotton to vegetable and fruit crops. They have received US Envir-onmental Protection Agency (EPA) approval for three more mating disruption products to add to their portfolio of pheromone products for introduction this season in California. NoMate(R) LRX has been developed for the control of oblique-banded and Pandemis leafrollers in tree fruits (principally apples), NoMate BHF for control of blackheaded fireworms in cranberries, and NoMate OLR for control of the omnivorous leafroller in vines and fruit trees. Ecogen say that once-a-season applications make these products both easy and econ-omical to use. They suggest that NoMate LRX used in combination with their Crymax Bacillus thuringiensis- (Bt-) based insecticide can provide growers with a biologically based IPM system for season-long control of leafrollers in apples.

Montana-based Mycotech opened a Beauveria bassiana production plant this summer and are looking to expand their international market. Meanwhile, the biopesticides division of the Mumbai-based Indian company Wockhardt announced an increase in sales in 1996 as their new fermentation plant came into commercial production for Halt, a Bt var. kurstaki-based biopesticide.

The Californian firm Agraquest are launching their first biopesticide, a water-borne fungal preparation based on Lagenidium giganteum developed at the University of California at Davis for control of mosquitoes. They have also received US Department of Agriculture funding for research on naturally occurring fungicides from bacteria. And in Japan, Tomen are also aiming to expand their biopesticide sector and recently acquired a 19% stake in the Dutch biocontrol firm Koppert Biological Systems. They have been marketing Koppert prod-ucts in Japan and Korea for the last six years, including bumblebee pollinators, predatory mites and whitefly parasites, but now plan to add more Koppert products to their range including agents for control of aphids.

Cyanamid and DuPont continue in their bid to develop baculovirus-based insecticides for lepidopteran pests. A major actor in this is the Autographa californica multiply embedded nucleopolyhedrosis virus (AcMNPV) originally isolated from alfalfa looper caterpillar by Patrick Vail while working at the USDA-ARS laboratory at the University of California, Riverside. Industrial research has led to the introduction into the baculovirus of a toxin gene from the brown scorpion, Androctonus australis which increased the speed of kill by the baculovirus by up to 60%, and work has also centred on developing more efficient mass-production techniques. Cyanamid and DuPont are also trying to broaden the spectrum of activity of the baculoviruses, and are conducting field trials with the modified AcMNPV against a number of lepidopteran pests including cabbage loopers, tobacco budworms, cotton bollworms and beet armyworms in cotton and other crops.