Enhancing Spray Efficacy | Leaf Surface Challenges & Adjuvants | Villa Crop Protection | Dr Brian de Villiers

In this webinar, Dr Brian de Villiers explores the often-overlooked factors on the leaf that directly impact spray efficacy, even after water quality and droplet size have been optimised.

He unpacks what happens once a droplet lands on the leaf, covering key elements such as surface tension, retention, droplet spreading and absorption, as well as how environmental conditions, plant structure and adjuvant choices influence final performance.

You’ll learn why correct adjuvant selection is critical, how different surfactants and oils behave, and how to improve spray performance by addressing challenges on the leaf surface.

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Transcript

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Okay. Hello, everyone. And welcome to today's webinar. It is not just past, 3:30, so, we're due to start now. I want to say a very good afternoon. And welcome to, today's webinar. And we're going to be talking about, enhancing the efficacy, by addressing challenges on the leaf. My name is Brian de Villiers. I'm currently working as a consultant for, Villa crop protection. After I spent many years working for Villa, I worked for 17 years, with the Villa team. You know, and I want to thank you for joining today. We trust that you will find this session insightful and valuable. As we discuss how factors on the plant can impact product performance and efficacy. And just before I begin, I've just got seed of some points that I just like to talk about. First of all, I just want to say thank you to the Villa team. That helped me, with these webinars. First one was Voltan on and the next two were me. That are in the background. And without them, we really couldn't do these webinars. So thank you very much. I'm not going to name any names, but thank you for everything that you do. Then I'd also like to say, hopefully we won't have any issues with electricity cutting off in my town or something with the Wi-Fi or whatever, but if there is, don't leave the webinar. We will then try and, make an alternative arrangement with a hotspot or something. And then we'll, they'll carry on with the webinar just after that. So just be just be patient with it. And then if you don't mind, if there are any questions, I, I think the best is, you see my personal details, on this first slide, you are more than welcome to contact me personally, via phone or via email. But I think it might be a bit cramped to do a lot of questions. Yes. So, you know, let's see how it goes. And please contact me if you have any questions. About, anything that, that I, handled in the, in the webinar. Okay. So today we're going to be talking about what happens on the leaf, and I call this the stepchild. Of before I carry on, I'm just going to put my camera off. Okay. Then I'll just save a bit of bandwidth. I call this one the stepchild of application technology. And that is because we often don't think what happens to a spray droplet after it is dried and it's lying there on the, on the leaf surface. So hopefully today I'll give you some pointers, as to as to what happens, afterwards and what can influence the efficacy of products. On the leaf. And I think you'll be very surprised at some of them, but all the the detail that I'm going to be giving you today is backed up by scientific data and trials. And it's been proved. So, so we've got some, some strong research to back up, the claims that we, that we make now, a bit of a background about the content that we're going to be discussing, today. First of all, I'm going to give you a first few slides, just a bit of background. That makes it might make you think a bit more about why, we often forget what happens on the leaf after the product has been, applied. And then we're going to be discussing surface tension. One of the biggest enemies of spray droplets. After that, we're going to be talking about absorption, and then Villa’s adjuvants that address address retention, droplet spreading, and absorption. So we're going to be talking more about the surfactants, in Afrikaans die benatters, and then we're going to end off with the stickers. Villa isn't really into, stickers, but I'll just have one slide about the stickers. So we're going to be talking of the adjuvants we're going to be talking about today. Are the products that contain surfactants or oils or stickers. And then lastly, I'll just summarize everything. And then please stay in the webinar, because we're going to be having a competition right at the end where you can win, win a very nice prize. So, just stick around and, we'll be doing that on the very last slide. Okay. Let's start with a bit of background. And like I said, I hope this makes you think a bit about, why we often forget about what happens on the leaf. So for instance, we've got glyphosate, dissolved in your spray water. We tend to think that once we have conditioned the water with an ammonium sulfate product, for instance, like class act or velocity or whatever, we tend to think, that often the, battle is won. And then for the more, we also tend to think that if we've got enough coverage on plants. So therefore if the droplets are the right size, and we get increased coverage and so on, so we fix the water quality and we fixed, the spray droplets. So you're going to get, many more droplets that reach, the target. Then we tend to think the job is over. But. I just want to show you this. In this case, this particular application was done 100% correctly. Except that the weeds were very big. Okay, let's forget about that for a minute. But that that gave us some nice fertile material. But the mixture was a registered mixture. glyphosate + 2,4-D. They added ammonium sulfate to this mixture, which is a 100%, correct. And and what happened was the, the grow applied from right to left applied this product or this mixture with this specific adjuvant. And then he switched over because he didn't have any more of that adjuvant. He had something else in his shed, and he switched over to another adjuvant. And great was he surprise when eventually he saw what the difference in control was. And the only difference here was the good control on the left. He applied it with a surfactant, a water soluble surfactant, and on the right to apply this mixture with an oil adjuvant. So I think that should get you thinking as to the importance of adjuvants and how it how important it is to just choose the right, adjuvant in that it would be an a surfactant or an oil or maybe even later we're going to be talking about different surfactants and how they can also, differ from one another. For the Afrikaans speaking people, the surfactant in Afrikaans is bennatters, but not the. So let's start at the beginning. One of the biggest enemies of, a spray mixture and the spray droplet is surface tension. Now, you guys must remember we fixed the water quality already. And maybe we've even fixed the droplet spectrum. But if we do nothing about the surface tension of the spray solution, then we going to still have problems. So water is typically a liquid that has a relatively high surface tension. So that means that, the spray droplets of, of that specific spray solution, if we've done nothing about the surface tension, those spray drops, stray spray droplets are going to act like a rubber ball. So, so a definition, a rough definition of, of surface tension is the ability of a spray droplet to act like a rubber ball. If we do nothing about, about the problem. So let's see what happens if we apply a product. We don't use a surfactant or an oil adjuvant. Or there is no surfactant or an oil adjuvant built into the formulation of one of these products. Simply what happens then is that you're going to get, bouncing off of droplets. So you've done all the hard work. You fix the water quality, you fix the spray droplets, the spray droplets on the ideal size range. But because you've done nothing about the, surface tension of the water, you get droplet bounce and you get poor retention. Of that, particular crop protection product. So you can see that the plant phase is a further phase. And, and you can do everything else correctly. But if you get this plant phase wrong, then you're going to pay for it with poor efficacy. The next thing that's going to happen if you, do not use, or there's not a surfactant or oil in the, in the, spray mixture is you're going to you're not going to get this. You're not going to get any droplet spreading. So that's the next thing that surfactants and oils do in water. They give you a droplet spreading if you do not have, surfactants in oil in that particular, spray solution, the droplets are going to spread out at all. So therefore you're going to get less retention in the first place. And in the second place, you're going to get much less droplet spreading, both of which, affect the coverage. So it's not just your deposition agents that affect coverage. It's also this surfactants and the oils that you use. In your spray solution that helps that you get less droplet bounce and that you get more droplets spreading. Now let's look at this video of Master Lock. And you'll see those two concepts very clearly in in this particular video. So the droplet strikes the leaf surface. And what does it do. It doesn't run off. It doesn't shatter. It doesn't bounce. It's retained on the leaf surface so that in the first place it's increased the coverage and then secondly, you get a certain amount of spreading. And spreading is important for, for products. Excessive spreading is not always a good thing. And we'll get to that later. But you need some spreading of that, of that spray droplet, to enhance the or to increase the coverage, on the leaf surface. So therefore you're getting more product that stays on the leaf surface. But I want to give you a word of caution. And it's a very, very important word of caution. Retention and droplet spreading are not always correlated. Let me repeat that again. The amount of droplets that are retained on the leaf surface and droplet spreading are not correlated. That means that super spreader surfactants, they might spread a lot on the leaf surface, but it doesn't mean that they are always going to give you the most retention. Some products and I'm not downing super spreader products, I'm just taking an example. Some products may, reduce the surface tension. A lot. But and they might spread very nicely, but that doesn't mean that they're going to retain more droplets on the leaf surface. So don't think that you want to retain more droplets on the leaf surface, that you're always going to use a product that has super spreading abilities. That is not always the case. Sometimes products with less spreading ability, retain more droplets on the on the leaf surface. It sounds counterintuitive. It doesn't sound right what I'm saying. But it's what what what I'm referring to. And I'm not going to go into that at this stage. It's dynamic surface tension. It's when the droplet impacts the leaf. What is the surface tension there? And sometimes super spreader products haven't got a good dynamic surface tension and they could bounce off the leaf okay. So we've the first two aspects that we've spoken about. Now is is is retention and droplet spreading. And they are both influenced by the surface tension, of the water. The higher the surface tension, the more droplet bounce. And then the less spreading, that, that there will be. That's normally the case, but not always the case that I showed you in this previous slide. So let's talk about the next thing. And this, this is probably with my work with adjuvants, this is probably the place where people make the biggest mistakes because they, they reckon that surfactants and oils are just there to reduce the surface tension, to increase retention and to increase droplet spreading. But that's only where they function starts. They've got a very important, function as far as absorption of systemic products especially are concerned. And this is why it is so vitally important. I can't stress this enough. Always use the registered adjuvant surfactant or oil that has been, registered with a particular product or a tank mixture. If you change from one product to another, even though they may look very similar or they do very similar things. It could be that you get the same retention, the same droplet spreading, but the absorption couldn't be totally different. So absorption on the leaf faces numerous challenges. And it's actually I don't know if miracle is the right word, but it's amazing to to see that crop protection products still work. If you see the challenges that they must face from the spray tank to the droplet phase. And then probably the major, major challenges are on the leaf itself. So if we look at the first challenge that absorption on the leaf faces, it's it's weather conditions. So it's temperature. It's how much cloud cover it is. Humidity is a very big one. That is important. And then obviously related to weather is also, under drought conditions, the plants would be under stress with a thick, waxy layer on the leaf surface, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So weather and environmental conditions, during application and off the application to when products are still active on the leaf, you know, when the water is evaporated, there's still a lot of activity that happens after that weather and environmental conditions play, massive, massive role. So please stick to label recommendations as far as weather conditions are concerned. I know it's not always easy. Especially in a country like South Africa. But it's important, that, that, that, that we apply these products under the correct weather conditions. So that's the first, challenge that he's faced. But droplets and crop protection products on the leaf and absorption in particular. The next one is, trichomes on the leaf. You know, those hairy structures on the leaf are called trichomes. And and that's the next challenge, obviously, on hairy, leaf surfaces, like, for instance, I'm thinking, Conyza, Skraalhans, If you look at that leaf, it's almost got a woody structure on the leaf. So you can imagine if you're applying a product, it does not break the surface tension enough, or the adjuvant that you apply with it. It's going to rely on those hairs, those trichomes, and never be absorbed. It's very difficult for the product to be absorbed via the trichomes. It must normally, go via the leaf itself and not the hairy structures on the leaf. So that's important that we get that droplet to go through that trichome layer on the leaf surface. The next thing. And also a very important challenge that, that crop protection products, especially systemic products face on the leaf surface is the waxy layer on the on that leaf surface. So obviously when you look at weeds, for instance, and crops, all of them have got different wax structures and thickness of wax. And then obviously if weather conditions, environmental conditions are poor, that means that the wax gets thicker and it becomes more and more of a challenge. And I don't know if, if, if, you know this, but different crop protection products have different route that they go into the plant main route. So the story that that goes through the stomata is not really true. There's probably some, product that is absorbed through the stomata, but normally that goes through the leaf surface. And then they get absorbed into the plant. Now it's important, for instance, if you're applying an SL on SG product that's a soluble liquid or a soluble granule that normally you apply to surfactant with that water soluble products because it's got a different entry route. Normally those products normally go through the polar entry route. So let's think of a product like glyphosate for instance. Glyphosate is going to go through the polar entry route. So what it's going to do it's going to look for cracks in that wax so that it doesn't have to go through the wax and then find the source of least least resistance until it gets into the plant. So that's where your SL and SG formulations are going to be absorbed. Products that are more oil soluble or less water soluble. Luckily e c s e w some g formulations. Odds. Oh yeah. They are. So many of these products, when they are systemic, they normally follow a different entry route into the plant. And we call that the nonpolar entry route. And what they like to do, they like to keep in the waxy layers of the leaf, so they stick in those waxy layers of the leaf. And therefore, initially, there's not just the first part of, of the absorption process. That is why it's important to often apply oils with these products. They off. They are obviously always exceptions to the rule. And you must look at the label as to what adjuvant you must apply. Don't just use this as a blanket recommendation, but this is why they are surfactants and oils that are used for different reasons that are used with different formulations, of crop protection, products. The next issue or hurdle that crop protection products face are tank mixtures and cations in water. But let's forget about the cations. We've spoken about the cations previously, and we've told you that you must use, ammonium sulfate based products. And other products are class act and the velocity. But let's talk about tank mixtures. Tank mixtures are probably one of the biggest reasons that you get antagonism on the. Of products. So what we did here, this is let me just explain this to you. What we did was we applied, a sulfonylurea herbicide. That's a leaf surface. Those are the stem water that you can see, and you can see that droplet has dried. It's, let me just have a look at 500g enlargement of a spray droplet. It is dried, and all you can see there is the crystals of that sulfonylurea that are still lying, there on the leaf surface, now let's take that same product. But we apply it now, with it with a it was an antagonistic foliar nutrient in this case, that's what it looks like. So you can see the the spray droplet residue looks totally different. You can, if you look at the side of this of that spray droplet residual, it almost seems a bit raised. The crystals are much bigger. It could be that there were reactions of that product, of the crop protection product with a foliar nutrient on the leaf. It's not that it bound it or anything, it's just that, that, that it could have bound it, but it's just that maybe, there was just a physical barrier to absorption. So it is very important when you are applying tank mixtures that you know, that, that the tank mixture that you're applying is not antagonistic, is not going to limit the absorption amount or absorption rate. Because often these reactions don't happen in the spray tank, where we can see these reactions. Often it only happens on the leaf when water becomes limited and you get the salting out and reactions that happen. On the leaf surface, for instance. So that's the, the, the next challenge. So just on the, on the leaf as far as absorption is concerned. But it needn't only be absorption. It could be other processes that products do on leaf surfaces, contact action or whatever. They so many factors that influences it is surface tension which influences retention and droplet spreading. And then it's the whole absorption thing and the whole absorption thing is also then influenced by weather. But by, by tank mixtures, it's, it's influenced by, by so, so many factors, the absorption routes into plants, etc., etc., etc.. So yeah, that's why it's important to stick to registrations. So I told you just now about spreading and if I had to give you a choice, as to, you know, what do you think a spray droplet must look like? Let's, let's take the product that is, that the most adjuvant research has been done worldwide on and that is glyphosate, by far, let's take glyphosate, for instance. If you applied glyphosate, which of those two spray droplets would you would you prefer. Would you like a spray droplet. That is very poorly sprayed out? Or would you like the one on the right that is spread out a lot? Now, I'd say 70% of people, when I asked them this question are, not going to ask for your response now, but when I ask them this question, they say they will choose the one on the right. But you must think further. You must think, what happens after the water dries, you know, from these spray droplets after the minute, after a minute or two, the water has dried. Now, what are you left with? Then? You're left with it. Then you left with the active ingredient or the product formulation that is lying there and must be absorbed over the next few hours. And research has shown that the one on the left is sometimes more effective than the one on the right. So I'll show you some data about that just now. Sounds too good to be true, but there is data to to prove that once again, if a grower's got a product and, surfactant that he's applying a product first, he runs out of it and he uses something else that he has initiated, there could be repercussions, especially if conditions are not that great at that. That's when you get, a really you distinguish or you show the difference between the correct adjuvant choice and the incorrect adjuvant choice. So yes, the data that I was talking about. So we're going to stand still a little bit at this histogram. It's actually very simple. So what we did here we applied glyphosate with four different surfactants okay. So it was the same rate of glyphosate. The only thing that differed was the surfactant that we applied with it. And you obviously you can see the big differences in efficacy. And the second thing that you can see, if you look at the percentage control, the percentage control was very poor. Even the best treatment had pretty poor control. Now I just want to tell you this is how adjuvant research is done. Please don't say, well, this is unacceptable and we'll never use one of these adjuvants. This is how adjuvant research is done. Normally what you do is you reduce the rate of your herbicide in this case so that you can show the difference between adjuvants. And normally you get less than perfect control, but you want to show the difference between the surfactants in this case. So yeah, we applied exactly the same chemistry of surfactant. A chemistry of surfactant for instance, is the alcohol ethoxylates, that are used often in South Africa. But we're not going to go into that detail now. But we used the all 4 surfactants in this case had exactly the same, chemistry. So they will all one chemistry of surfactant. The only difference between these products was they spreading ability. So that means the rate of glyphosate that was the same. The type of surfactant was the same. Only the spreading ability differed. And normally what people will say is the one on the left is most spreading and the one on the right is least spreading. But it was the other way around the product that had the best efficacy, with that specific surfactant or that was applied with a site with the least spreading at the most or the highest efficacy, the one on the right that had the most spreading was the poorest one. The two reasons for this, first of all, glyphosate is one of those products. It must be applied with surfactant. Whether the surfactant is in the glyphosate formulation or whether it's applied is a tank mix. That's that's, we can debate that issue some other time, but it should be applied with this effect. So, so, Glyphosate, I showed you in that previous slide that, you know, after the droplet is dried, you get that, the one on the left that didn't spread a lot. It's sort of, sort of was lying there in a little pile, if I can put it that way. And the other active ingredient was spread out. It's been proved in scientific research that glyphosate, that spray droplet residual must not be spread out too much because if you spread it out too much, you lose that effect and you reduce efficacy. The second reason for this and and this, the, I haven't looked so, in detail at the research, but this could have also happened. It could have been that the surfactant on the right, the one that sprayed so well and the one that, where the efficacy was so poor, it could be that its retention was poorer than the one that didn't spread a lot at all, or the others that didn't spread so much. So, please, people, ask you nicely. I plead with you, do not, leave out the registered adjuvant and apply nothing, do not replace the registered to effect. And don't oil with another one because you will pay for it in some way. Okay, so what happens when replacing the registered surfactant? With another product. So so for instance, that's a scenario. What we have that's the that we have. That's a leaf surface. The green is the green block. And on the leaf surface you have a droplet lying there. And it's spread out a lot. So say for instance, the grower is using this product because it is registered on the, crop protection product label. So this is the product that he's using, but he runs out of the product or somebody else comes to him and says to him, listen, yeah, but you'd rather use my product. And he switches to a product like this to one that doesn't spread out a lot. What what could happen when they do things that could happen dry? First of all, coverage could be affected. Maybe maybe not. And efficacy will be well, they could have some something could happen to efficacy. Maybe you can be fortunate or the grower is fortunate and nothing happens. All the conditions are excellent at that stage. And he gets away with it and he thinks, well, I didn't make a mistake. Good sense. You know, all these surfactants, they all the same. But I can guarantee you and the less optimal conditions that they will be, some problem with other coverage and efficacy or some other issue. Let's look at another scenario. Say, for instance, a product, that, or a crop protection product is registered with a surfactant that doesn't spread a lot like the one on the left. What happens if the grower decides, listen, he's going to replace that surfactant with one that spreads the hang of a lot, and the droplets are going to be spread out on the leaf surface. Well, there's almost even more that can go wrong. First of all, absorption could be affected dramatically, especially with products like glyphosate and and some of the products. So secondly, the efficacy will be impacted. Thirdly, runoff. We all know the effect of runoff. I'm one of those people that says adjuvants normally do not have any fatty toxic properties unless they increase the runoff of sprayed droplets, if they increase the runoff of sprayed droplets, spray droplets go an d lay on a certain area of the leaf. And you can get, some phytotoxicity, some scorching of those leaves. So absorption efficacy runoff factor toxicity, they can all be problems. And then we get to, for instance, a complaint like this. And we want to blame all kinds of other things. And it could be just a simple thing of too much or too little spreading on the leaf surface. And that influences, the efficacy. Now, it could be that, registration holders of crop protection products have actually registered the wrong surfactant or adjuvant with a product. They could have maybe done better. But I'll tell you from my side, stick to that surfactant, even though it might not be always the most effective one. Stick to that because that's the way they did the research. That's where they worked out the crop protection product rate, and they found that there was little or no phytotoxicity, for instance, and efficacy was good. So try to stick to the label, label recommended. Surfactant or oil if it's impossible. If for instance, the the company that that distributes, this adjuvant, has run out of stock, then it is important that you replace that product with, with another product that is, is registered with similar, crop protection products. All that you contact your agent or you contact me or you contact Villa, to hear, what is a suitable adjuvant to replace it with? So hopefully that never happens. But please don't just think that surfactants and oils, or just surfactants and oils and you can replace the one with the other, it just doesn't work that way. Okay. I'd like to show you a video. So we have two scenarios here. That's a leaf surface. The one on the left and the one on the right. And I'm going to try and show you what the ideal scenario is. If a droplet impacts, those leaves and what happens afterwards. There's something that happens on this slide that I don't quite agree with. But I'll talk about that a bit later. So let's just go through this video and have a look. So it impacts the leaf. That's what we want. We want a surfactant that hydrates the waxy layer on the leaf that, and then this effect into oil then takes it in by the correct absorption route and sees to it that there's, that there's as much active ingredient as possible that reach this reaches the site of action. And therefore it's important to stick, to effective, well researched and registered adjuvants. The one thing that I do not agree with on this particular slide is the scenario on the on the right. Sorry, it almost appears as if that surfactant or oil that's been applied, the dissolved the the wax on the, on the, on the leaf. And that is not true. Surfactants and oils. Do not go and strip that wax off the leaf and make it vulnerable. Do damage and phytotoxicity, etc., etc., etc. that's not what they do. They rather hydrate the waxy layer on the leaf. To increase the absorption of a product. If you're looking at surfactants and oils, I'd say oils or maybe a little bit more. Oh, I don't know what the word is. Aggressive. That's actually the wrong word because they rarely cause phytotoxicity. But oils normally hydrate the waxy layers on the on the leaf surface a bit more effectively than surfactants. But please remember that surfactants must be used with the correct products and oils with the correct products. Okay, let's get to Villa’s surfactant and oil adjuvants that address retention, droplet spreading and absorption doesn't help but talk to you about these things. And we don't, look at particular products because then you know exactly which products contain surfactants and oils. In their formulation. So that that is the range of the adjuvants that contain a certain amount of surfactant in the formulation. So let's start. MasterLock, is an oil based adjuvant, but it also contains surfactant in the formulation. And that's a product that is used exclusively. And it has deposition agents that are used exclusively on fruit crops. Charge is the next one that's, Villa’s super spreader surfactant. That's an organo silicone surfactant. That is normally used, when you need more spreading, for instance, you're applying on very waxy leaf surfaces, like, for instance, cabbage, or cruciferous crops. If you, and any place where, where you need to reach difficult, targets direct is the next one, which is a mixture of a plant oil and, and, Charge, basically it's a plant oil plus, organic silicone super spreader that's, registered mainly with Villa’s in, sorry with villas, fungicides, but also sometimes used with, products like Clethodim. For instance, then we have Villa 51, which is just a pure surfactant. Alcohol is oxalate non-organic surfactant? And that is various all around, product class act NG which we'll be talking about a bit later. I'm not going to go into that now. Then summit super is but pretty similar surfactant to Villa 51, but it also has a nitrogen solution and it is used widely with, with herbicides. And then aqua buff plus is villas one of villas buffer products but also contains quite a large amount of surfactant. Not a large amount. Sorry. To retract it. Aqua buff doesn't contain a large amount of surfactant in the formulation. Aqua above actually contains very little surfactant in the formulation. So that means if you are, doing a fruit crop application and you just need a little bit of, surfactant, with your buffer, then aqua buff might be your product, but aqua buff plus, I mean, but if you're applying, into row crops, for instance, then this effect in that is, present in aqua buff plus is not enough for that. So it's important to note that when you are applying buffers that also have surfactant in the formulation, they have a limited amount of surfactant. And that limited amount of surfactant might be sufficient for fruit crop applications, but may be altogether too little for our crop applications. But let's concentrate on class activity and show you how it works. So first of all, what Class Act does, and you'll see the two processes there. There is there's runoff on the water side. There's no runoff on the class act side. So therefore it increases retention. The second thing that it does, it increases droplet spreading. Not too much. Like I said, life doesn't like too much droplet spreading, but nonetheless it increases droplet spreading. The next thing in class act that it does on the leaf surface it contains a humectant. Now the humectant containing class acting is called high fructose corn sirup or high fructose maize sirup. That is that you make it in there. But let me just show you two photographs or electron micrograph, photos of, of, a product that has been applied. This was a sulfonylurea. So it's got nothing to do with glyphosate. I just wanted to show what a humectant does on the left, the product was applied without a humectant, on the right, it was applied with a humectant. So I think it's quite clear from that particular slide. If you apply a product without a humectant, after the water has dried. Those dry crystals of that product lie on the leaf surface, or could lie on the leaf surface for an extended period of time and not be absorbed. If you're applying a product, with a humectant, you make them say, for instance, you're applying glyphosate, with a humectant, then the spray droplet residuals remain moist. You can see that spray droplet residue looks moist. There's crystals are lying in that moist spray deposit. And that increases the absorption time. And the longer you can increase, for instance, glyphosate absorption time, the better the efficacy will be. So. So that is why it is important to apply glyphosate for instance with humectant. But not just any humectant. I personally did research years ago with different types of humectant, and there are only some that are good for glyphosate and the one in class act is obviously is the one that that we recommend. The next one that I'd like to show you. And remember that number 125%. We've said, now what what what that surfactant does in class Act, it increases retention and the droplet spreading that you make and keeps that spray droplet, moist for a long period of time on the leaf surface. Now, how does that all relate to efficacy? So the one on the left was Chenopodium, Hondebossie. That was a that received a certain a rate of glyphosate, and the adjuvant used there was ammonium sulfate. The one on the right was the same weed, but class act was used. A class act also contains ammonium sulfate. However, the class act also contains the surfactant and the humectant. look what difference the surfactant and humectant make. First of all, you get to see a bit of increase in speed in the first place. And I'm going to read right through to day 13. In the end, both sides were controlled, okay. Whether it had ammonium sulfate or the other one had close acting. But you could clearly see that, the speed of, of, of, of dying, of of necrosis in those weeds was much higher on the class act, ingested. And it could be that if you chosen a lower rate, for instance, or applied on a very difficult to control weed, it could be that the one on the left would never have been controlled. So that is how important you make and surfactants are. The 125% was with this. Winfield also did some research lab research and they they applied glyphosate just with ammonium sulfate. And then they applied it with class acting. And then they measured the with C14, they measured the amount of absorption. And when applying glyphosate with class acting, the absorption was 125% higher than ammonium sulfate alone. Just shows what an adjuvant, can do. Then just a lost, slide before I carry on. Well, it's not into stickers. We do have a sticker in, that it was registered a few years ago, but it's not commercialized. Probably because we didn't place too much emphasis on the stickers. But let me tell you what stickers are. Stickers are not effect surfactants, things like value 51 charge or whatever. I've got no sticking properties. Therefore, if you apply the product, it rains afterwards. Then that, that surfactant, if it's still moist, chances are small because it, it dries out relatively quickly, but it will be washed off with stickers. They normally made from, pine resin or, synthetic products. And these products, they physically stick. So that sprayed droplet residual sticks for an extended period of, of time. So they applied, mostly on fruit and veggie crops. They from pine resin or synthetic? I told you that the the labels that are out, they say that they can handle up to 25mm of rain or irrigation. I put a question mark over behind that because it might do that. But, depending on the I think depending on the intensity of the rain, and then that spray droplet residuals degrades gradually over time. So this means it's a typical product that you will apply with contact fungicides and insecticides, that you want stuck on the leaf surface for an extended period. So, different stickers have different sticking time, ranging from 7 to 21 days. The ones that have got seven days are normally applied. More on veggie crops. The one was 21 days or more applied on fruit crops. My big questions over these products and not the products themselves. I've got no, don't wanted to discuss anyone's product, but as far as the Villa portfolio is concerned, crop protection, product portfolio, I want to know what the effect on the absorption of systemic crop protection products are. We don't always know. And secondly, the effect on other adjuvants. If you're using this, can you still add another adjuvant, to the spray mixture. So we trade lightly with this particular product. What I would recommend you to do if you do need a product that sticks, spray droplet residues, then ask the registration holder for, his label and it should be an extended label. You must see that it is registered with, with, range of crop protection products and in particular, that type of crop protection products that you want to apply if it does not that have that on the label, then I don't know, that if the research has been done. And the second thing is, to ask for, for for data, for data on that particular product. So I'm not shooting these products down at all. I think they they have their place. I think they are niche products just like the super spreaders that I spoke about. I think these products also have their place. But they must be used in a registered fashion if and when I say necessary. I just want to get back there when I say in a registered fashion, with with the crop protection products, because that's where we, have a say into what adjuvants can be applied with our crop protection products and, and what not. And then shortly, the summary, we sort of on time, maybe a few minutes ahead of time. Adjuvants are important beyond the tank in the droplet. And we so often forget that once we fix the water quality and once we've, corrected the sprayed droplets, sizing and and we've reduced the ultrafine droplets, we think everything is okay, but we forget about that process that happens on the plant afterwards. And in some cases, I believe that is probably what, you know, it's difficult to say which process is the most, is the most important, but, but I've got a soft spot for the plant because I think, it's very important and often forgotten. We must remember that surfactants and oils increase retention, droplet spreading and absorption. So if a product is or a crop protection product is registered with an adjuvant, then please apply it with an adjuvant. Sometimes A is preferred to include the adjuvants in their formulations. And then you must look at your tank mixture and whether it's necessary to add other surfactants or oils or not. But it's important that when you have a registration, with a particular adjuvant that you applied with it, especially this effect and oils. And obviously this applies to all adjuvants, water quality, rectifying adjuvants, deposition agents, etc., etc.. And we need to reduce the effect of water quality, weather and the plant surface to increase efficacy. Now we talk water quality. We spoke last time about pH and cations, but a very important water quality factor that we never take into concern or very little take into consideration is, is surface tension. And it plays such a huge, huge role, with the efficacy of products like I showed you and just simple spreading of spray droplets can, can, influence the efficacy of products. Good. We basically at the end of my presentation and please don't leave at this stage, because we've got two more slides to go through and the last one will be the competition slide. But we've just got this advert on Class Act NG, and, and that's basically what we spoke about. So it's a 4 in 1 adjuvant. Class Act NG. The NG stands for next generation. So Class Act is an established name in the United States. For instance. It's been on the market for many, many years. But each time they changed something in the product formulation or or added a different effect into whatever they gave it, a different what's it, suffix and cross asset class act NG stands for next generation. So it contains ammonium sulfate CornSorb technology, which is the humectant and non-organic surfactant and the anti foam, product. So you're welcome to scan that code there. And that will take you to the Class Act NG label. And then also some more information I think about Class Act. And then basically to the last slide today. Is the competition slide. So I'm going to ask you people to scan that QR code, that you can see on the screen. Now, it will take you to answer three quick questions. And then you can win, obviously those prizes that are shown on the right there. So please scan that and don't go off yet. Even though you've scanned. I've just got, a few things that I'd like to say, but as I'm talking, you can just scan that and, and, and on, start answering those questions. So people want to, and let me just put on my camera. I want to thank you very much for joining today's webinar. We trust that you this session provided valuable insights into what happens on the plant leaf, basically, and how we can improve product performance. So we've gone through, water quality. We've gone through droplet, manipulation. And the last one was how to increase or decrease efficacy on the, on the leaf surface. And that's where adjuvants are so important in each phase. Please, please feel free to leave your comments about the webinar, in the comment section. It's always great to hear from you. So please do that. And please, scan that QR code. I have told you already do stand a chance to win those prizes. And then lastly, and also an important point is please look out for communication coming your way over the next few days with a short question and answer activity giving you the opportunity to earn CPD points. So I think that's that's very important. So so that you will receive in the next few days. And yeah, that is my story. Thank you so much for joining today. We are basically five minutes from time. And, it was really a pleasure for me to, to present today. Thank you so much.