By the end of November 2013, the number of pesticide registrations for seed treatment products has reached 375 and it will climb to over 900 in the next two or three years. During a conference in Nanjing, Dr. Li Xianbin from ICAMA revealed that the number of registrations and field trials had more than doubled from last year and more active ingredients and combination technology will be introduced into this booming sector.
The first ICAMA approval for seed treatment products happened in 1985 to control the millet downy mildew. After that, this product category has struggled for a decade as only 5 products had been approved by 2000. The growing stage started from 2007, more and more companies began to register their products with ICAMA, in order to get a piece of the pie. So far, more than 400 companies have entered this niche market and the number of registered products has reached 375, consisting of 20 temporary registrations and 355 full registrations. That represents an 11.3% increase on the previous year. What is worth mentioning is that the number of applications for field trial has grown to 347 from 187 back in 2012.
Dr. Li pointed out that the highly toxic and high toxic active ingredients have been gradually replaced by eco-friendly ingredients. Seed treatment registered before 2008 was mainly based on some high toxic chemicals such as carbendazim and carbofuran. These active ingredients were almost phased out after 2009 when the applicants have shifted their interests to neonicotinoids and triazoles.
As surveyed among the applications for field trial, the most popular pesticide active ingredients that have been applied was the insecticide imidacloprid, which consists of 136 applications, followed by the insecticide thiamethoxam, insecticide fipronil, fungicide difenoconazole and fungicide tebuconazole, with the application numbers to be 88, 77, 66 and 40, respectively.
Even though seed treatment is currently enjoying its boom in China, its proportion in the overall crop protection products is still very small. The seed treatment product accounts for merely 1.5% of all the registered pesticides and their applicants accounted for 5% of all the pesticide companies registered with ICAMA.
“In EU, seed treatment accounts for almost 15% of the crop protection market. If a similar market share can be enjoyed, China’s seed treatment segment could reached as much as 3.5 billion CNY, more than doubled from today’s 1.5 billion CNY”, estimated by a representative from Rotam.
