The Role of Surfactants in Pesticides (1)

With the increasing awareness of environmental protection and the need for green food, many countries have issued stringent regulations on pesticide safety to meet the needs of agricultural production and protect the environment. Due to the important role of surfactants in pesticide formulations, the pesticide industry has conducted research on a new variety of surfactants.

The new pesticides have improved in several aspects, such as the increase in biological activity, the decrease in active ingredients, cost, and the improvement in the compatibility with the environment. Usually, when spraying pesticide liquid on plants, there are two diametrically opposite phenomena. One is that some plants are difficult to be wetted by the spray liquid, and a great portion of pesticides roll off the leaves in the form of water droplets, and only a small amount of pesticide adheres to the leaf surface. And for plants that are easily wetted by the spray liquid, water films are formed on the leaf surfaces, causing the active ingredients to drip off the leaf edges.

According to different target crops, it requires to improve the research on pesticide formulations. Select suitable surfactants to ensure that the surface tension of the recommended dose of the liquid is moderately smaller than the critical surface tension of the target plants, which means the concentration of surfactants in the solution reach or exceed the critical micelle concentration, increasing the pesticide on the plant surface and reduces the loss of pesticides, reducing the dosage of pesticides, the cost of active ingredients, and pollutions.