Fargro News - July 2007
Nemolt
New SOLAs and a new rate of use

The Pesticide Safety Directorate have issued Off-label Approvals (SOLA) for the use of Nemolt on a range of crops including ornamentals, aubergine, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, melon, courgettes, various brassicas, forestry nurseries and amenity vegetation.

Nemolt is an insect growth regulator with label recommendations for control of brown-tail moth, caterpillar pests and whitefly. SOLAs are for control of thrips, whitefly, caterpillars, and some leaf beetle and cabbage root fly.

Nemolt is well suited to use with most biological controls.

These are the first edible crop uses for Nemolt in the UK and were achieved by the HDC using mutual recognition of the product's Dutch approvals.

Almost uniquely the SOLAs approve the use of Nemolt at double the UK label rate as a resistance management tool to aid control of Western Flower Thrips where growers have a limited choice of products available.

Copies of the SOLA documents with details of restrictions rates etc are available from the PSD website see see our links page.

History of Nemolt in the UK:

• Nemolt was introduced to UK growers and pest control operators in 1991.
• The original Shell Chemical Company label was for the control of a range of caterpillar pests including Brown Tail Moth, Small Ermine Moth and other larval pests including whitefly.
• Early leaflets gave advice on control of caterpillar pests (two applications), whitefly (three applications) and sciarid fly (apply to the compost and repeat at eight weeks).
• Around 1995 the Shell pesticides division became part of Cyanamid.
• In 1997 the label was changed restricting use to ornamental plant production and use to control sciarid fly became an "off label" use.
• In 2003 the Cyanamid company was absorbed into BASF. Nemolt became a BASF pesticide.