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Insecticide that also protects plants against stress

A health farm for plants

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Drought: lack of water and heat are two of the main stress factors that cause harvests to fail.

Today we are well aware of the concept of stress in humans. Yet plants too can suffer from drought, heat and other extreme environmental impacts. The effects of these stress factors in plants are very serious: they produce fewer leaves, flowers and fruit, which in turn results in smaller harvest yields. Yet help is now on the way: researchers from Bayer CropScience have discovered that the insecticidal active substance imidacloprid also helps plants to better cope with stress.

A welcome side effect

It was by chance that researchers observed the first indications of this additional benefit: In field trials, crops treated with imidacloprid grew much better than untreated plants, even though the pests did not reproduce as expected. Read the following article to find out how the well-known active substance is being developed into an effective shield against plant stress, establishing a completely new field of crop protection research in the process.