Bioglobal together with its South African distributor, Arysta LifeSciences SA, has been successfully granted full agricultural-chemical product registration for Bioattract Heli in South Africa. This is a major milestone for both companies after lengthy regulatory delays. Bioattract Heli is a kairomone mixture concentrate for the control of American Bollworm moth (Helicoverpa armigera) in wheat, soybeans and dry beans. 

Having recently purchased an initial amount of BioAttract Premix, it is expected that Arysta LifeSciences SA will place further orders targeting sales in the summer broadacre crops before the end of the year.

The American bollworm is a serious economic-pest across a many broadacre crops in Southern Africa. It is a major problem in South Africa during winter time when the pests fly into the wheat. The pest has been difficult to control using conventional insecticides with increasing reports of moth resistance. On top of this the inadequate access to aircrafts means that it is increasingly difficult for farmers to ensure insecticide coverage over the whole crop. This has led to serious annual losses for farmers who are looking for alternative control methods such as biopesticides.

Over the past 5 years, Bioglobal has proven Bioattract Heli’s efficacy through extensive field trials in both Australia and South Africa.  The results have been outstanding across multiple broadacre crops (figures 1-3) and demonstrates that biopesticidal products such as Bioattract Heli have an increasingly competitive market position.

Figure 1:

In this trial, a single application of Bioattract Heli was applied by air to a cotton field. A corn field near the treatment field (but not the control field) continued to release large numbers of moths so the population did not fall to zero. Moths continued to be killed for a period of 10 days after treatment.

Figure 2:

H. armigera migrate out of the wild vegetation on the Western Cape and invade wheat crops in late winter and early spring each year. Their behaviour is much like that of native budworm (Helicoverpa punctigera) in grain legumes and armyworms in wheat in southern Australia. A series of trials were conducted using Bioattract Heli in winter wheat. The trial in figure 2 (and in all the trials), a major influx of moths were eliminated with a single treatment of Bioattract Heli. Moths in the untreated field continued to be active and lay eggs.

Figure 3:

Figure 3 demonstrates that eggs ceased to be laid after day 1 post treatment in Bioattract-treated fields but continued in the untreated fields. While most work has targeted Helicoverpa moth species, significant kills of looper, cutworms, armyworms and cucumber worms were found in trials. Essentially all strong flying, nectar feeding moths are candidates for control with Bioattract Heli.