Farming today is more complex than ever before. The unpredictability of the weather, control of pest and weeds, market price development, scarcity of natural resources. To rise to this challenge, farmers need new technologies and solutions.
Working together to overcome challenges and find new solutions is one of BASF’s great strengths, and it’s something we’ve been doing in agriculture for over 100 years. Our employees are in constant contact with farmers and agricultural experts in every region around the globe. They work hard to understand what approaches are required to optimize agricultural production, increase farm profitability and improve the quality of life for a growing world population.
BTC Europe’s’ offering for the agricultural industry ranges from additives for crop protection, fertilizers and seed treatment, complexing agents for the creation of micronutrients as well as polar solvents for the production of herbicides and insecticides.
Our Trilon® chelating agents belong mainly to the class of amino carboxylates which are organic complexing agents. They are available
- in powder or in liquid form, or as granules;
- as pure acid version or salt version;
- in very high purity as high-quality grades for special applications.
Chelating agents differentiate
- in the performance of binding capacity to form complexes,
- in the stability of the formed complexes.
Based on the used amino carboxylic acid the following organic chelating additives are available:
- Trilon® B grades; ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid, or Na-salt (EDTA)
- Trilon® M grades; methylglycine diacetic acid (MGDA)
Solvents dissolve active ingredients for crop protection. The solvent selection is depending on the active ingredient structure and the application technology. Polar solvents are used as co-solvent, besides a solvent for the active ingredient.
The availability of a broad range of pigments as well as pigment preparations allows the realization of a huge variety of colours, covering the complete colour space. The broad range of dyes, dedicated to agricultural applications, are suitable for colouration of seed treatment and crop protection products.
To achieve optimal yield and quality crops demand essential nutrients. These needs are covered by fertilizers. Colouration of fertilizers helps to differentiate between specific types and qualities.
The availability of a broad range of dyes & pigments as well as pigment preparations allows the realization of a huge variety of colours, covering the complete colour space. BTC’s range of dyes, dedicated to agricultural applications, is suitable for the colouration of seed treatment and crop protection products.
BTC Europe offers under the brand name Trilon® a broad product range of high performance and innovative complexing agents, also known as chelating agents. Chelating agents are able to complex metal ions. Thus they are used to produce micronutrients. Those produced micronutrients act as plant nutrition and provide healthy growth and yield of a plant. Trilon® products are ideal products for the manufacturing of micronutrients based on several metal ions, like iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), magnesium (Mg), copper (Cu) and further more metal ions.
Mostly the Trilon® B types are used for the manufacturing of micronutrients. The presence of free metal ions, such as iron, copper, calcium, manganese and further other metals, allows to form stable complexes rsp. micronutrients. Trilon® B forms typically 1:1 complexes. High stability of these compounds makes them ideal and provide a very good solubilisation property of the formed complexes (micronutrient) when they are used.
The newest generation of complexing agent is reflected by the Trilon® M grades. Based on methylglycine diacetic acid the product provides a very good chelating performance in addition with a readily biodegradability property. The excellent ecological and toxicological profile of Trilon® M has been verified in various repeated studies.
AgBalance® – Improving Sustainability Performance In Agriculture
Sustainability is integral to modern farming. It is at the center of a farmer’s daily work and drives improvement efforts on the farm. BASF has developed a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool called AgBalance® that allows farmers to review the contribution of their current farming operation across all three sustainability pillars.
Life cycle approaches offer a robust assessment mechanism to monitor the sustainability performance. Life Cycle Thinking is about going beyond the traditional focus on production site and manufacturing processes, but includes environmental, social and economic impacts of a product over its entire life cycle (Life Cycle Initiative, 2017)1. This may facilitate the analysis of trade-offs between the economic, social and environmental dimensions within entire value chains.
On a farm, a variety of farming practices as well as input materials contribute to more or less sustainability in agriculture. How can this be measured to allow the comparison of different ways of farming?
Did you know that BASF hosts a dedicated podcast for the Agricultural Industry called “The Science behind your Salad?”
The Science Behind Your Salad is a podcast for the whole world. We’re not only in search of the best food on the planet, we’ll be telling the stories behind how that food is grown. We’ll meet the scientists searching for the next innovative breakthroughs in food production, we’ll hear about new technology already revolutionizing the way crops are grown and the stories of the growers.
And we’ll meet the farmers, those pioneers striving to do one of the biggest jobs on earth, putting food on our plates every day in the face of huge challenges.
