Physical property requirements agrochemicals

Violation of the physical property requirements of an agrochemical will lead to poor translation from laboratory to field conditions. The optimum physical property requirements for an agrochemical will differ widely depending on their specific application. How an agrochemical is applied, where it is applied and where it needs to translocate to Ae ultimate site of action will dictate the physical property constraints. We will list some of the physical property relationships that that have been published and how these principles can then be applied to the end use. These relationships can be applied to fangicidal, herbicidal and insecticidal applications. 

The specific use of an agrochemical will determine the physical property requirements. The failure of Agrochemicals in the translation from the laboratory to the field can often be traced to some barrier that needed to be traversed, that was not. We are going to ignore problems in the lack of translation due to such effects as photolysis, hydrolysis and oxidation. The optimum physical property requirements for compounds differ widely depending on their application. There has been proposed an agricultural rule of for commercial insecticides... 

Ttiglyceride oils have been extensively used for various applications such as coatings, inks, and agrochemicals. These oil-based polymeric materials, however, do not exhibit the rigidity and strength required for structural ap-pUcations by themselves, hi some cases, therefore, triglyceride has been used as a minor component in polymeric materials it was used solely as a modifier to improve the physical properties of the polymeric material. 

It can be seen from the above short discussion that agrochemical formulations are complex multiphase systems and their preparation, stabilization and subsequent application require the application of the basic principles of colloid and interface science and this is the objective of the present part [1, 2]. It will start with a section on surfactants and the physical properties of their solutions. This is followed by a section on the interfacial aspects of agrochemical formulations including adsorption of surfactants and polymeric surfactants at the air/liquid, liquid/liquid and solid/liquid interfaces. The stabilization of dispersions, both electrostatic and steric, is discussed in the next section. The basic principles of colloid and interface science are illustrated in detail by considering emulsion concentrates (EW s) and suspension concentrates (SC s). A summary will be given on microemulsions and controlied release of agrochemical formulations. 

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