Serenade® Biofungicide was granted a registration by the California Environmental Protection Agency's Department of Pesticide Registration (DPR) for use on vines, fruits, vegetables and walnuts. The Federal EPA recently granted a registration and the exemption from the requirement of tolerance on all crops for Serenade.

Used on grapevines, Serenade is the one product that effectively controls all major diseases including powdery mildew, Botrytis bunch rot, sour rot and suppresses downy mildew. The biofungicide is also registered for use on cucurbits, leafy vegetables, cherries and walnuts. It is effective against a number of economically important diseases including other powdery mildews, downy mildews and walnut blight. Additional crop label expansion is in progress.

Serenade was submitted concurrently to the US EPA and the California EPA's DPR in order to accelerate the market launch of Serenade in fruit, nut and vegetable markets. Concurrent submission was possible because AgraQuest was able to provide California with efficacy data that demonstrated effectiveness.

"We are grateful to California's DPR for the rapid review of Serenade Biofungicide and are quite pleased at the interaction we had with the Agency,'' said Dr. Jennifer Ryder Fox, AgraQuest's Director of Regulatory Affairs. 

"Serenade is an exciting product for growers faced with increasing disease pressure from pathogens that have developed resistance to fungicides,'' said Rhonda Smith, farm advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Santa Rosa, CA. Smith, who was impressed with the product's effectiveness on powdery mildew in a 1999 grape trial, says the new product's unique mode of activity is its greatest strength.

"Growers will now have a material that can be used alone or with other products to break the resistance buildup in their vineyard,'' according to Smith. "Serenade will help growers find the optimal combination of products to control diseases under the specific conditions they face.''

The active ingredient in Serenade is a natural microbe discovered in a California orchard. It was then isolated, developed and registered by AgraQuest from the company's labs and headquarters in Davis. It is produced via a proprietary fermentation process that utilizes agricultural materials such as crop proteins and carbohydrate sources.

AgraQuest discovers, develops, and markets effective, environmentally friendly, and safe natural products for farm, home and public health pest management. Influential growers, agribusinesses and internationally recognized venture capital firms back AgraQuest. AgraQuest discovered Serenade® biofungicide through its targeted screening system, less than a year after the founding of the company. In over 500 field trials using commercial conditions and equipment, Serenade showed comparable or improved efficacy over current fungicide standards against a range of important vine, fruit and vegetable diseases. Besides its biofungicide Serenade, AgraQuest has a full pipeline of other bioinsecticide, bionematicide and biofungicide product candidates for agriculture and home use. 

Company news release
N2805