The flexible drift retardant for added reliability and security in potatoes
With a changing potato blight population and aggressive genotypes, the anti-drift agent Crusade is an indispensable weapon for growers to help insure fungicide performance in the fight against blight.
Download our Crusade handbook here or keep reading below.
Crusade – Your best insurance against blight
Crusade helps to maximise protection against blight by removing the physical limitations on blight fungicides to work at their best. By manipulating droplet size it helps deliver fungicide down to the middle and lower leaves of the canopy and reduces the driftable fines that reduce coverage at the top of the canopy. The significant drift reduction helps keep growers spraying. This makes Crusade a vital addition to ensure sprays are both targeted and timely for added reliability and security.
Maximises coverage and protection
Excellent drift reduction and deposition
Crusade reduces the number of fine spray droplets, smaller than 100 microns, that are the most susceptible to drift. In turn, this effect increases the spray angle uniformity at the nozzle, helping to ensure the correct dose is applied to the target, whilst protecting the wider environment.
Maximises coverage to the upper, middle & lower canopy
Crusade has been designed to reduce droplets at either end of the spray spectrum – it coalesces ultra-fine droplets into small droplets so they are less prone to drift and it splits very coarse droplets (a feature of low drift nozzles) into smaller droplets so they are less prone to bounce or run off from the leaf. Optimising droplet size in the upper end of the spectrum enables the spray droplets to penetrate the canopy lower down and be retained. The addition of Crusade to fungicide sprays helps to maximise coverage to all parts of the crop canopy, preventing scattered infection.
Strengthens blight control with low drift & flat fan nozzles
All nozzle types produce a wide variety of droplet sizes. Different nozzle types and design can alter the small and large droplets and the proportion in each category. By optimising droplet size with flat fan and low drift nozzles, Crusade has been proven to maximise fungicide coverage and strengthen blight control with low drift and flat fan nozzles.
Helps maintain spray intervals
Significant drift reduction
Crusade offers significant spray drift reduction, helping growers to keep spray timings on track and tight spray intervals maintained. This crucially helps ensure fungicides do not run out steam before the next application.
Full programme protection
Flexible application timing
Crusade can be co-applied with fungicide throughout the season and up to the latest timing of the fungicide, allowing the entire blight control programme to be optimised.
Tried and trusted
Excellent crop safety record
Low dose, easy to use, and with an exemplary crop safety record, you can have peace of mind using Crusade. Over the last 7 years Crusade has been tested in replicated trials with a very wide range of fungicides. On farm its trusted for its safety, drift reduction and the practical benefits it offers growers.
Crusade optimises droplet size
Application technology trials have shown that Crusade has the potential to focus more of the spray droplets in the spectrum that is better optimised for potato application. Using laser diffraction particle/droplet size technology, Syngenta application specialists have shown that by physically altering the properties of individual droplets, Crusade appears to reduce the number of ultra-fine droplets that are most susceptible to drift, but at the same time reduce the number of very coarse droplets that could be more susceptible to bounce or rolling off the leaf.
Crusade optimises droplet size, maximising coverage
Optimises droplet size at both ends of the spectrum
The Jealotts Hill research showed that, with the industry Standard 05 Potato nozzle, the addition of Crusade to Revus decreased the proportion of <100µm droplets (the finest drifty droplets) by 47% per sq cm. With the low drift Lechler 05 nozzle, the very coarse droplets were split into smaller drops, increasing droplet numbers by 50% per sq cm.
Crusade helped maximise Revus coverage
Crusade helped maximise blight control
Application technology trials in the field have shown that drift reducing nozzles and Crusade help to maximise blight control, whilst reducing the risk of drift. Potato blight trials were conducted at Eurofins in 2019 and 2020 to investigate the effect of nozzle type and Crusade on Revus blight control. In both years, the best blight control with Revus was achieved using 90% DRT nozzles + Crusade.
Crusade helped maximise blight control with flat fan and low drift nozzles
Crusade proven to maximise fungicide coverage across the crop canopy
Glow-in-the-dark UV tracer dye was used to reveal precisely where application droplets were reaching in the Eurofins 2020 trials. Results showed that with the standard potato 05 nozzle, the majority of the product was held on the growing point and top leaves of the canopy. When Crusade was added, we got more larger droplets, better able to reach down to the middle and bottom leaves of the canopy.
Syngenta 3D90 nozzle + Crusade best for blight control
Application technology trials in 2021 re-enforced 2020 results showing the Syngenta 3D90 nozzle + Crusade as the best technique for reducing late blight infection overall. The trial looked at the impact of application technique on the control of late blight in potatoes using the fungicide Amphore Plus.
Visually better blight control with Crusade
Maximising fungicide performance with Crusade
Crusade has been rigirously tested and proven in SRUC and Eurofins blight trials over the last 7 years with a range of fungicides, where it has been shown to maximise blight control.
Crusade has been proven on farm with an extensive range of blight fungicides: Amphore Plus, Axidor, Hubble, Infinito, Invader, Kunshi, Lieto, Mandrake, Nautile, Option, Profilux, Percos, Presidium, Ranman Top, Revus, Rhapsody and Tizca.
Crusade is also compatible with a range of insecticides: Biscaya, Gocha, Hallmark Zeon, Laidir and Sumi-Alpha.
Crusade can also be used with a range of foliar feeds: Calcium, Cropsure Mag TE, Intrafol, Magnor, Master Mag TE, Mobo, Nutriphite PGA, Opte-Phos, Opte Pro and Stop it
Visible difference with Crusade
The anti-drift benefits of Crusade are so visible that you will instantly see the difference.
Patrick Elliot is spraying for blight every seven days to keep on top of the disease pressure in Pembrokeshire and said he noticed the difference within 10 seconds of the first application.
“Dai (agronomist) advised just dropping a can in to test it as we were spraying, so we did and instantly saw the difference in how the spray was covering the crop.”
Download our Crusade handbook
For more information on Crusade, how to use, trials results and testimonials, download your copy of our latest handbook here.
For any technical questions or required support, please get in touch with Will below.
