A new fungicide for late blight in potatoes, Areli, is registered for use in the UK, with a full commercial launch planned for spring 2027. Developed by Certis Belchim, it combines two active ingredients with different modes of action: cyazofamid and valifenalate.
Cyazofamid acts directly on the pathogen, disrupting its energy production and stopping the disease from developing. Valifenalate also kills the fungus directly, but it acts as a plant health elicitor as well, stimulating the potato plant's own defences against disease.
"The product is fully systemic and moves within new growth," said Ed Bingham, global crop manager for potatoes and beets at Certis Belchim, adding that it spreads through the canopy into new leaves and concentrates towards the leaf tips, which can be important sites for the first late blight infections. "Late blight is constantly changing, with new strains and genotypes emerging," he said, and some populations are more diverse and aggressive, making control harder.
Elicitors are compounds recognised by receptors on the plant's cell surface that switch on defence-related genes. The responses include antimicrobial compounds and stronger cell walls, and the build-up of salicylic acid as a signal contributes to systemic acquired resistance, so a primed crop responds faster and more strongly when the pathogen arrives. "Areli primes the crop, allowing the plant to activate its defence mechanisms faster and produce a stronger response," Bingham said. Elicitors are emerging as an extra tool in integrated disease management.
Certis Belchim also sells a microbial biostimulant for the root zone that helps mobilise phosphorus and potassium and supports nitrogen fixation, and a cold-extracted seaweed (Ascophyllum nodosum) biostimulant for crops under stress. Bingham was speaking at Farmers Weekly's Arable Insights Live: Potatoes event on 17 September at Dyson Farming Research in Lincolnshire.
Photo: Сарапулов / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Source: Farmers Weekly
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