The pioneering adjuvant brand Hasten has become a genuine home-grown success story for Melbourne based Vicchem, due to its continued growth in popularity amongst suppliers, resellers, agronomist and growers. Vicchem’s National Sales Manager, Owen Connelly said Hasten was one of the few adjuvant brands that offers agronomists and resellers a strong cross label that covers a large range of protection options.

Widely sold in the distinctive 20L green cans, Hasten has a solid research base. It’s manufactured to high-quality standards and extensively trialled to ensure safety to users, crops and the natural environment.

From Vicchem’s R&D division, Technical Manager Peter Jones reminds resellers and agronomists of reassuring results from Vicchem’s recent studies into adjuvant safety. Mr Jones said “all adjuvants have the potential to cause crop phytotoxicity which plantchemists believe is due to cellular breakdown. Based on Vicchem’s long-term studies, canola derived Hasten caused less cellular damage than mineral oil adjuvants and alcohol alkoxylate based non-ionic surfactants such as BS1000”, he said.

A key strength of Hasten is it’s ability to help systemic selective herbicides penetrate the waxy cuticle of target weeds, without damaging the crop.

On environmental safety, Mr Jones said Vicchem had also studied the effects of adjuvants on beneficial insects and predatory mites. The results show that Hasten was generally safer than Mineral oil based adjuvants and alcohol alkoxylate based non-ionic surfactants, which can be harmful to predatory green lacewing, predatory mites and parasitic wasps when sprayed on them, at typical use rates.

Mr Jones said Vicchem was also exploring opportunities to use some of the outstanding properties of Hasten in the development of new products; tailor-made made for certain pesticide types with Outright 770 for glyphosate applications in hard water an excellent example.

We are researching to incorporate these properties of Hasten into new adjuvant products in a targeted way.