The Environmental Protection Agency has registered sulfoxaflor — the active ingredient in Transform WG from Corteva Agriscience — for several crops, including cotton. State registrations are pending.
“This decision is supported by substantial data on human health and environmental affects, including many new studies on the effects of the insecticide on bees,” Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said during a dial-in press conference. “This will help growers all over America by making available an effective tool to control challenging pests with much lower environmental impacts.”
In cotton and sorghum, the product had been used under a Section 18 — emergency use exemption — for the past few seasons.
The recent actions mean Section 18 exemptions will no longer be required, and the uses under which the Section 18 had been granted will now be registered uses, Dunn says.
In cotton, sulfoxaflor is used to control tarnished plant bug, also known as lygus. In sorghum, it is used to control sugar cane aphid.
Corteva Agriscience, the product’s registrant, welcomed the news.
“The new and distinct mode of action will play a pivotal role in efforts to inhibit the increasing incidence of insect resistance to current insecticides,” Bridgette Readel, Corteva market development specialist, said in a statement.
EPA’s decision also drew praise from the National Cotton Council.
“We appreciate EPA’s decision to make sulfoxaflor available for use on cotton,” NCC Chairman Mike Tate, an Alabama cotton producer, said in a statement. “EPA has been diligent in requesting new studies of sulfoxaflor use on cotton and other crops that provided additional data for the agency’s scientific review per court order.”
