Formulation technology has a vital part to play in the development of efficacious and economical crop-protection products. This includes identifying regulatory-favorable and supply-secure co-formulants that can deliver performance through a wide-range of solid and liquid product types. Also important are strong environmental drivers for more sustainable and safer co-formulants that pose inherently lower risk for producers and end-users.
Formulation technology has a vital part to play in the development of efficacious and economical crop-protection products. This includes identifying regulatory-favorable and supply-secure co-formulants that can deliver performance through a wide-range of solid and liquid product types. Also important are strong environmental drivers for more sustainable and safer co-formulants that pose inherently lower risk for producers and end-users.
Lignosulfonate is a randomly-branched, chemically multifunctional biopolymer, produced as a value-added co-product of cellulose production. It is derived from biomass, most often wood/timber, as a chemical derivative of lignin. The focus in this article is lignosulfonate produced by sulfite processing, where the product is based on Scandinavian softwood (spruce) and liberated from the raw material (lignocellulose) as a sulfonated water-soluble polymer.
It should be recognized that lignosulfonate is established as a non-toxic, sustainable and regulatory-favorable (e.g. REACH-exempt, EPA-approved) performance-chemical that is used in many commercial products and applications. These applications include: plasticizer for concrete; crystal growth inhibitor in lead-acid batteries; dispersant and colloidal stabilizer for dyestuffs; binder for animal feed; and (of main importance in this article) binder, dispersant, complexing agent and crystal growth inhibitor for agricultural formulated products. The common denominator in these applications is lignosulfonate’s capability to absorb at interfaces, thus imparting one or more of a dispersing, binding, complexing and crystal-growth modifying activity into the final product.
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