As Syngenta marketing manager John Yates explains, there are plenty of benefits for New Zealand farmers behind these impressive numbers.
“Many farmers will know Syngenta as a chemical manufacturer, with products such as Amistar, Moddus and Karate Zeon playing a part in their crop protection programme.
“They also know we introduce new products like Twinax and Seguris Flexi from a large R&D pipeline.
“But what they probably don’t know, is the important role New Zealand plays in the development of new cereal fungicide chemistry for Syngenta globally,” he says.
Because the company carries early global cereal fungicide screening trials here in NZ (contra to the northern hemisphere season), it gets an early look at how well up and coming products perform under NZ conditions.
John Yates says that’s why Syngenta was able to introduce the first cereal SDHI fungicide in NZ - Seguris Flexi - three years ago, after five seasons of local trials.
“In fact, we launched Seguris Fexi in NZ before most other countries in the world, which is great for our farmers.”
Another statistic growers probably aren’t aware of is that over 80 per cent of the barley grown in NZ comes from a highly successful Syngenta cereal breeding programme, he adds.
“NZ plays a key role in this, with Cropmark Seeds in Christchurch contracted by Syngenta to screen its barley cultivars contraseason to the northern hemisphere.
This arrangement not only speeds up the Syngenta breeding programme, it also highlights cultivars best suited to NZ growing
conditions, which can then be commercialised in NZ through agents, with Cropmark as head licensee.”
Barley varieties from the Syngenta breeding programme include County, Dash, Doyen, Garner, Quench, Snakebite, Sumit and Tavern.
A new Syngenta cultivar, Sanette, has outperformed the next highest yielding barley cultivar by 10 per cent in its first year of CPT2, which is pretty impressive, Yates says.
“Another benefit a company the size of Syngenta can offer farmers is the development of adjacent technologies, to help them
achieve better results from its products. An example of this is the range of spray nozzles we’ve developed through our application expert Tom Robinson in the UK.”
“Tom has visited NZ on a number of occasions, and since his last visit two years ago, we have delivered thousands of Syngenta spray nozzles to farmers wanting to improve coverage and productivity while reducing spray drift.”
All up it’s a strong combination for NZ arable farmers, he says
“So when you next pour a Syngenta product into your spray tank, you might also be applying it to a Syngenta seed variety, through Syngenta nozzles!”
For more information phone 0800 333 336
or visit www.syngenta.co.nz.