ABBA Ultra

ABBA Ultra. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Fruit growers in the northwest have another tool in the fight against mites. Patrick Dosier, Market Development Manager for MANA Crop Protection talks about their product.

DOSIER: ABBA Ultra is our newest formulation of Abamectin which is a highly effective miticide and also one of our best value miticides. ABBA Ultra is a new formulation which is a 2X concentrate. The need for this came out of California where there’s low VOC requirements and those are volatile organic compounds to help prevent air contamination.

Mana decided to go with a 2 times concentration with ABBA Ultra which in practice reduces the volatiles by half.

DOSIER: For growers that are concerned about air quality and/or the possibility of regulations occurring in Oregon or Washington this product is going to be VOC compliant in California and elsewhere if regulations occur. Our strategy was to put twice as much action ingredient in the same jar. And by doing that we don’t change our formulation technology.

A big plus side is that you’ll have half as many containers and calculations are simply cutting your current use in half.

DOSIER: So we’re getting the same efficacy that we got out of the old .15EC formulation that most people are familiar with. Abamectin needs to go inside a leaf. It needs to penetrate the cuticle via locally systemic product. There is a water-based formulation that is also clean air compliant that may not have the same efficacy due to it’s water based formulation.

More tomorrow on Mana’s new ABBA Ultra product.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.