New seed treatment to offer better protection against flea beetles

If you were farming on the western Canadian Prairies in 2019, you’ll most likely shudder at the thought of flea beetles, knowing how rampant they ran throughout the spring.

Syngenta recently rolled out a new flea beetle option for seed treatments in Western Canada, called Fortenza Advanced, that has the active ingredients sulfoxaflor and cyantraniliprole. Justin Bouvier, seed care specialist with Syngenta, was at Crop Production Show at Saskatoon, Sask., to highlight the product.

“It is is an enhanced product to add to our base layer neonic insecticide. You’ll be able to tank mix with either Prosper or Helix Vibrance. Our key pests we are really targeting is striped flea beetle as well as cutworms,” Bouvier says. “So the heavy lifting will still be done by the traditional seed treatment that’s in the market, but we added a sulfoxaflor insecticide in that mix. We find the sulfoxaflor is extremely sharp on the striped flea beetles.”

He notes their field trials have shown the striped flea beetles are extremely active early on in the season, which is where the new product will be especially on target, moving the protection window up to 35 days, which adds an extra week of protection.

“It’s all bite-to-die technology, so the flea beetles still have to bite. However, with Fortenza Advanced, we are noticing a lot less stem feeding when it comes to flea beetles, and then additionally we get that cutworm protection that we are really starting to need in western Canada.”

Watch the conversation between RealAgriculture’s Kara Oosterhuis and Justin Bouvier, below:

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