New Protection for Peanuts From
Aflatoxin By Sharon Durham June 22, 2004
Peanut farmers now have a biological pesticide for protecting
their crops from fungi that produce aflatoxin. A biological pesticide developed
by Agricultural Research Service
scientists recently received U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Section 3 registration.
Circle One Global,
Inc. (COGI), of Cuthbert, Ga., the sole licensee of the ARS treatment, will
immediately begin producing the biopesticide, called Afla-Guard, for use in
2004. The ideal time to inoculate peanut fields is late June or early July.
ARS scientist Joe W. Dorner and colleagues at the agency's
National Peanut Research Laboratory in
Dawson, Ga., made the biological treatment from spores of a nontoxigenic strain
of Aspergillus flavus that is applied to barley kernels. The kernels are then
applied to the soil beneath the plant canopy, where the fungus colonizes the
barley and establishes itself to compete against toxigenic strains of A. flavus
that are naturally present. Other strains of A. flavus, as well as A.
parasiticus, are the primary producers of aflatoxin.
Afla-Guard, in field trials, reduced aflatoxin typically 70 to
90 percent after the first application. Repeated applications in subsequent
years reduced aflatoxin by as much as 98 percent.
COGI has agreements with peanut shelling companies to provide
Afla-Guard to growers in Alabama and Georgia for treatment of 7,000 to 8,000
acres this year. More will be available in future years. Until now, there were
no chemical or biological applications that farmers could put on their peanut
crops to protect them from aflatoxin.
Aflatoxin outbreaks occur when certain crops, like peanuts and
corn, are stressed by drought conditions.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency. |