Crop protection market

Other products represent only a small share of the crop protection market with plant growth regulators being the largest of this sector and other product types including rodenticides, molluscicides, avicides and nematicides. 

In each significant crop protection market sector, the number of products has at least doubled in the twenty years from 1975 to 1995. The marketing of mixture products in certain crops, such as wheat, further increases market crowding. The major crop protection chemical companies have products in nearly every major sector and the intensification of competition not only puts pressure on pricing but also means that so-called me-too products caruiot justify their development costs - leading to the clear conclusion that step-changes in effect are required to achieve substantial market penetration. 

The global crop protection market for the year 2000 was about US 32 bilhon. Herbicides accounted for about 45 percent, insecticides 22 percent, and fungicides 20 percent of worldwide sales. The top selling agrochemicals were glyphosate and paraquat as herbicides, chlorpyriphos and imidacloprid as insecticides, azoxystrobin and mancozeb as fungicides. The most important uses were on cereals (except rice) with... 

Generic pesticides (those that have exceeded their patent life) represent over half of the global crop protection market (US 18 000 million of end-user sales in 1998). The patent expiry of important molecules such as the pyrethroids, triazole fungicides and glyphosate has resulted in substantially reduced prices, and there have been tensions between the major multinational and generic (often national) pesticide companies. Nevertheless, some 70% of the profits from multinational companies come from compounds that have exceeded their normal, 20-year patent life (i.e. approximately 13 years of profitable life Finney, 1988). In response, the major multinational companies have attempted to maintain their market share... 

Finney, J.R. (1988) World crop protection markets demisting the crystal ball. British Crop Protection Conference - Pests and Diseases, 1, 3-14. 

The crop protection market is estimated to represent more than 6 billion of euros for the European Union. PPP sales considered in monetary terms were increased annually in the years preceding 1999. ... 

The crop protection market is essentially flat at about 32 billion USD. It has grovm somewhat over the last few years so some companies have benefited from... 

Phillips McDougall, The Global Crop Protection Markets - Industry Prospects,... 

With its carbazate chemistry, bifenazate, a structurally new mitidde with favorable biological properties, has been identified and brought to the crop protection market. 

Due to the high competitiveness of the crop protection market, the research process from synthesis of new chemicals to promotion of lead compounds to the project phase has to be as streamlined as possible. It is imperative not only to eliminate compounds with weak efficacy or phytotoxicity but also chemicals with non-desirable MoA as early as possible from further evaluation and to concentrate on a few promising candidates. Besides phenotypical inspection of treated plants, the target site of a compound is usually determined with specific enzyme assays in test tubes or microtiter plates, which is a time consuming, labor- and costintensive process. It requires either purification of the respective enzyme from plants or preparation of the proteins by heterologous expression in, for example,... 

Today, the neonicotinoids are reckoned as the most important class of insecticides in the crop protection market. Many smart syntheses have been published. 

The total world consumption of surfactants as agricultural adjuvants was estimated to be 60,000 t in 1993 [10], and this figure is expected to continue to increase as more concerted efforts are made to reduce the amounts of crop protection chemicals used. Indeed, whilst figures in 1995 showed the worldwide adjuvant market valued at only 3% that of the corresponding agrochemicals, the increase in use per annum was 5% as compared with 1.5% per annum for the agrochemicals [9]. 

Chemical substances make a vital contribution to almost aU aspects of the hves of human beings. Chemicals bring about improvements in the health of the population and our quahty of life through new developments in, for example, treatment of disease, food safety, or crop protection. They also make a vital contribution to the economic and social well-being of citizens in terms of trade and employment. The global production of chemicals has increased from about 1 rnilhon tons in 1930 to more than 400 million tons today, and more than 100,000 different chemical substances are now on the market. 

So far, it has been established that there is a very large market for crop protection agents globally and that these markets are dominated with crops such as wheat, barley, maize, soybeans, rice, cotton, grapes, top fruit and total weed control in countries and regions such as the USA,... 

There are few important weed, insect or disease problems in major crops that have not been addressed and for which there is not at least one synthetic crop protection agent available to the grower. The challenges to the agrochemical industry are now associated with the search for novel, competitive products in an already crowded market, for which use... 

The market for fluoroaromatics, with fluorine atoms as ring substituents, has expanded considerably over the past 20 years, driven not only by the need for intermediates in pharmaceutical and crop protection products but also for the manufacture of monomers for high-performance aromatic polymers. Although a range of possible methods have been described for the introduction of fluorine into the aromatic ring, only three are currently established for... 

As mentioned above, one interesting aspect of the chemical sector is that the industry as a whole is highly fragmented. The top ten companies in chemicals (excluding pharmaceuticals) account for only 18 percent of the total market, well below comparable values in other industries, such as automobiles, where the top ten firms account for 85 percent of sales, or pharmaceuticals, where the top firms account for more than half of all sales (Fig. 1.6). While the overall consolidation level is low, several product segments have already consolidated. The top ten manufacturers of acrylic acid, for instance, account for 85 percent of their market. The top ten manufacturers of crop protection products account for 87 percent of their market, and the top ten in paints and coatings for 42 percent. 

During this period, further biotechnology penetration and value competition led to an overall decline in the market value for crop protection chemicals of around USD six billion, only partially restored by biotechnology. 

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