Zorina fungicide provides white mold control in soybeans

DAVENPORT, Iowa — Research and development investment is important at BASF to continue adding products to the company’s innovation pipeline.

“The money we spend on innovation across the agriculture platform is pretty staggering — a total of about $1 billion annually in research and development,” said Vince Davis, BASF technical service representative.

“We test over 100,000 molecules to get some to reach the market,” he said during a presentation at the BASF Innovation Symposium. “It’s a timeline of 11 to 14 years for a product, so that equals around $300 million per molecule that might make it to the market.”

To put it in perspective, Davis said, it is like dropping $100 every three seconds.

In addition, BASF is one of the few companies that remains involved in doing this type of research.

“From 1970 to 2005, the number of companies doing agriculture chemical research plummeted to under 10,” Davis said.

A big change occurred around 1996 with the introduction of the Roundup Ready gene.

“When we got Roundup Ready crops, not only did the companies disappear that were doing research, but the number of patents being filed for new innovations also plummeted,” Davis said.

However, BASF continues to focus on providing solutions for farmers to deal with pests and diseases.

“In 2025, BASF had over 7,000 patent submissions and almost 400 focused on herbicide innovations,” Davis said.

“I am totally excited about Zorina because it is the first fungicide that has total disease control across the board in soybeans,” he said. “There are a lot of good fungicides on the market and a few products that are decent at white mold control, but they are not broad spectrum.”

White mold is a disease of high-yield environments.

“White mold has been getting worse because we keep doing a lot of things to get better at making yield,” Davis said.

That includes planting soybeans earlier and building the canopy a lot faster.

“We are planting varieties that branch more and produce more yield on those branches,” Davis said. “We are making shorter plants and we are planting a lot of soybeans before corn, so we have added quite a bit of season to this.”

“Zorina is a combination of the Revysol molecule which was a game-changing molecule in Veltyma and Revytek with Boscalid which is Endura that has been the premium white mold product for a long time,” he said.

However, Davis said, for Endura to be good at controlling white mold, it requires an early application at R1.

“The second problem with Endura is that it has been an expensive treatment,” he said. “It took a grower who knew he was going to have a white mold problem to want to invest that level of money for just white mold, because Endura is not a broad-spectrum product for other diseases we deal with.”

Endura must be applied to soybeans early because it blocks the spore germination.

“That’s when the clouds of spores float around and land on the leaf petals,” Davis said. “So, we do not want to be late with an Endura application.”

That is where Revysol is important.

“It has excellent residual and it also has more post infection control because it works more on the hyphal growth of the mycelia even after the germination is successful,” Davis said. “So, it broadens the application window when we put these two together from R1 to R3, and R2 is probably the sweet spot for most people.”

The Revysol molecule provides disease control for septoria brown spot and frogeye leaf spot.

“Everybody deals with septoria at some level,” the agronomist said. “And deals with it a lot worse in years when we have heavy storm events that gets the septoria splashed up off the soil environment earlier in the season and works its way up the plant which costs you important leaf tissue for yield production in lower parts of the plant.”

There are lots of transition acres, Davis said, where it has not made sense to spend the money for an extra pass for white mold protection.

“They might get white mold three out of 10 years,” the technical service representative said.

“But Zorina broadens your ability to spend money with a more consistent ROI to protect you from large losses with white mold. And you get predictable gains from the other disease control that you pick up with this fungicide,” Davis said.

“The important part is the exceptional residual you get from the Revysol molecule,” he said. “For the early applications, that becomes real important for broad spectrum disease control, and research shows at 21 days, with Zorina, there is still 77% of the active ingredient in the plant.”

Last year, Zorina was applied at three Purdue University trials.

“None of those trials had heavy white mold pressure, mostly frogeye leaf spot and septoria at two of them,” Davis said. “And yet Zorina was the highest yielding product across the board.”

Zorina was also tested in Tennessee.

“Frogeye leaf spot was the disease and Zorina performed the best in both reduction in incidence and yield protection,” Davis said.

“Zorina is the No. 1 white mold product on the market and it is important to understand it is the No. 1 product for disease control across the board with exceptional residual that we have not seen in a soybean product before,” he said.

“That opens up the possibility to get it on a whole lot of acres at a much earlier timing in the season,” the agronomist said. “On some acres, it might eliminate a special trip just for fungicide.”

“On other acres where we are focusing on white mold, Zorina is a phenomenal product in a two-pass system, where we have the early application for septoria brown spot and protection for white mold,” Davis said.

“And then push the broad spectrum application that would contain a plant health component closer to the R4 timing in soybeans, which is one of the most consistent ROI treatments you can do,” he said.