Mike McDermott grinned as he advanced to the next slide in his PowerPoint presentation. It featured a wide-angle shot of DuPont Professional Products’ impressive line-up.
“It brings a tear to my eye every time I see our family photo,” half-joked McDermott, global business leader for DuPont Professional Products.
“We’ve grown our family from zero registered products to 12, our team from two to 42, and the countries we serve from zero to 11, in eight short years,” noted McDermott, with carefully measured pride for his team’s accomplishments.
Actually, it is precisely that — DuPont’s constant investment in innovation — that enticed McDermott’s audience of about 55 lawn care professionals to gather in the first place. OK, the meeting venue — staying three days at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla., during the dead of winter — didn’t hurt. But according to many of the attendees of DuPont Professional Products’ first lawn care symposium, their time investment was driven mostly by a desire to learn as much as they can about DuPont’s great white grub killer, Acelepryn.
Bug break-through
“At DuPont, we don’t just mix together leftovers — two or three old active ingredients — and call it dinner,” said Mark Coffelt, Ph.D., global development manager for DuPont Professional Products. “We innovate. We invest a great deal of time and money to create entirely new classes of chemistry featuring novel modes of action, new levels of performance and more sustainable environmental footprints.”
Acelepryn’s active ingredient, Calteryx, earned reduced risk status in turfgrass applications from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Calteryx features the lowest solubility and application rate ever used for white grub control products, noted Chuck Silcox, global product development manager – turf and ornamentals, DuPont Professional Products.
“There is no signal word on the Acelepryn label, and there are no required buffer zones for applications near water,” Silcox added.
DuPont’s Acelepryn Lawn Care Symposium 2010 featured study after study — conducted by third-party researchers and lawn care pros, as well as DuPont scientists — showing Acelepryn to effectively control the 10 major white grub species as well as other turf pests such as annual bluegrass weevils, billbugs and caterpillars.
Investing in innovation
Daniel Potter, Ph.D., professor of urban landscape entomology at the University of Kentucky, said Acelepryn is the only insecticide for both the turf and golf markets that provides season-long control of both grubs and grass-feeding caterpillars.
“Acelepryn has very low toxicity with people, birds, bees, earthworms and fish,” Potter added. “We can recommend this product for its performance and also feel good about its environmental profile.”
Chris Paisley, technical director for Mariani Landscapes in Chicago, tested Acelepryn at a 120-acre cemetery, and he discovered the product saved a lot of turf, time and money.
“In areas where the cemetery’s board opted not to treat with Acelepryn, we had to go back and repair three-and-a-half acres of turf using 2,400 lbs. of seed, 130 bales of peat moss and 126 bags of mulch,” Paisley said. “The difference between turf treated with Acelepryn and turf not is as clear as night and day.”
U.K.’s Potter closed by agreeing with Coffelt regarding the necessity for ongoing innovation in lawn care technology.
“Some companies are trying to get more mileage out of their existing products by mixing them together,” Potter concluded. “I’m not a big fan of these combo products. I just don’t get the shotgun approach. Why apply two or three chemicals when you might only need one?”
