Wheat growers are set to get a new fungicide next season that promises the best septoria and rust control on the market, coming after the worst septoria season in decades and with rust rearing its head recently.

Agrochemicals giant Bayer is set to launch Iblon for 2024, from a new SDHI sub-class of fungicides. It has performance claimed to be as good as Revystar on septoria and as good as Elatus Era on yellow and brown rusts.

Greg Hanna, Bayer’s market development agronomist, emphasises its broad-spectrum disease control which, as well as being as good as anything else in the market for septoria and rusts, also shows good control of eyespot.

The product comes at a good time for wheat growers after they have struggled to control septoria this season due to such a mild winter and a wet spring, which may have been made more extreme by climate change.

“Iblon is showing good control of septoria, better than Ascra and for this year has shown better control than Revystar and on a par with Univoq,” Greg told Farmers Weekly at the Cereals 2023 Event on the Thoresby Estate in Nottinghamshire.

New SDHI fungicide

Iblon is the technology brand pre-launch name for Bayer’s SDHI isoflucypram and will compete with existing SDHI-azole mixes such as BASF’s Revystar (SDHI fluxapyroxad + azole mefentrifluconazole) launched in 2020 and Syngenta’s Elatus Era (SDHI benzovindiflupyr + azole prothioconazole) launched in 2017.

It will also go up against Corteva’s Univoq (picolinamide fenpicoxamid + prothioconazole) launched in 2021, and is showing improved disease control compared with Bayer’s existing SDHI-azole product Ascra (SDHIs bixafen and fluopyram + prothioconazole).

The group says the new SDHI has a cyclopropyl ring on its nitrogen molecule at the centre of isoflucypram which significantly enhances its broad-spectrumn disease activity.