Aug 11, 2021
Another tool for California to fight yield loss due to diseases rooted in fungi

Attune Agriculture, the leader in developing performance based agricultural products using hydrocolloid technology, announced Aug. 5 that Ampersand adjuvant is now approved for use with fungicides in California.

Ampersand is now officially approved for use with herbicides, insecticides, miticides, nutrients and fungicides in all 50 states.

Ampersand adjuvant is not a surfactant.

Using hydrocolloid technology, typically reserved for applications in the food industry, Ampersand works by controlling the water in the spray tank. This allows Ampersand to guide spray tank droplets, starting at the nozzle stage, all the way to the leaf’s surface. Unlike typical spreader/stickers, Ampersand is formulated to create high volume droplets. Ampersand’s meticulous droplet control, and evaporation protection properties, allows sprays with Ampersand to last twice as long on the leaf as leading surfactants. The result is 3X more spray to the leaf, 2X the absorption potential, and 4X the wash off resistance. Ampersand is able to boost performance for crop inputs even in high temperature/low humidity climates.

Ampersand has been field tested with top fungicides such as Quadris Top, Heritage, Cease, Mettle and Rally 40WSP. Trials included cucumber powdery mildew on cucumber, grape mildew on pinot noir grapes and powdery mildew on butternut squash. The average control for the fungicides alone was 52.6%. When the fungicides were tank mixed with Ampersand, performance was increased to an average of 70.5%.

Fungicide performance can be increased by 34% simply by adding Ampersand as a tank mix partner.

“We are finally able to offer our California growers the full breadth of Ampersand’s abilities across the entire range of crop inputs,” Greg Andon, CEO of Attune Agriculture, said in a news release. “The power of Ampersand is that there is no need to change your existing spray program. It simply boosts the performance of all actives growers are already using.”




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