How This New Insecticide Sets a Trap for Bad Bugs

Nearly six years after introducing the adjuvant Ampersand, Attune Agriculture wants growers to know the company is no longer a one-hit wonder. On Dec. 2 Attune announced EPA registration of its new line of non-systemic contact insecticides. Featuring the patented active ingredient Rhexalloid, Entrapment represents a new class of insecticide that uses a purely physical mode of action to control insect and mite pests in a variety of crops, including apple (codling moth) and almond (navel orangeworm).

“We’re classified by the EPA as a biochemical,” Ed Quattlebaum, Attune’s Director of Product Development, says. “We’re exempt from tolerance. You have a zero PHI (preharvest interval), and the REI (restricted-entry interval) is four hours. So, we’ve got all the good stuff.

“But I can tell you this is not your typical biological. We went out and tested this product using chemical standards. I don’t want this to be viewed as a biochemical. I want this to be viewed as an insecticide, and in most of the trials, we get control equal to or better than the chemical standard.”

While Entrapment is an insecticide, it borrows the same hydrocolloid technology of anchor adjuvant product Ampersand, which the EPA approved in January of 2019. Hydrocolloids, long used in the finished foods industry, are natural ingredients — gums — that have the ability to bind and control the characteristics of water-based solutions.

“We’re in a really dangerous situation. Today we’re losing insecticides at a faster rate than we’re coming up with new products,” Quattlebaum, the former CEO of biopesticide manufacturer Biosys, says. “A lot of it is due to the EPA and a lot of things they’re doing. But there’s also the fact of resistance.”

The Entrapment product line (four formulations) does not disrupt the metabolic or nervous system pathways of pests, which minimizes the potential for insect resistance, according to Quattlebaum. The Rhexalloid active ingredient transforms every spray droplet into a potential trap on the leaf surface. Those tightly anchored “traps” capture or immobilize small insects and mites (about 4 millimeters or less) that come into direct contact with the droplet but do not trap larger beneficials or harm honeybees.

“This product has a significant potential because it has a physical mode of action, and that will probably allow us to delay any resistance. I’m not going to say it’s not going to be resistant, because I’m an entomologist, and them damn insects — I swear to God they’ll figure out a way. But clearly, I think it’s less prone to resistance development.”

In apple, Attune has conducted six trials involving codling moth. The company evaluated the product in a typical rotational strategy involving multiple conventional sprays (see chart) as well as by itself.

“We’d substitute one of the chemicals for our product, and basically what we find is that in most cases, if you put our product in that rotation, you get a slight reduction in the damage vs. the conventional. So we actually improve it,” Quattlebaum says. “We’ve also run trials where we have used our product solely for every application for one generation of codling moth, and we were able to get higher levels of control than the conventional standard rotation. We’ve done that not only in codling moth but also in navel orangeworm in almonds. And we did the same thing with codling moth and walnuts.”