Posted 24 June 2004. Crop Management.

New Protection for Peanuts From Aflatoxin
 

Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture.

Washington, D.C. (June 22, 2004) - Peanut farmers now have a biological pesticide for protecting their crops from fungi that produce aflatoxin. A biological pesticide  developed by Agricultural Research Service scientists recently received U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Section 3 registration.

Circle One Global, Inc. (COGI), of Cuthbert, Ga., the sole licensee of
the ARS treatment, will immediately begin producing the biopesticide,
called Afla-Guard, for use in 2004. The ideal time to inoculate peanut
fields is late June or early July.

ARS scientist Joe W. Dorner and colleagues at the agency's National
Peanut Research Laboratory in Dawson, Ga., made the biological treatment from spores of a nontoxigenic strain of Aspergillus flavus that is
applied to barley kernels. The kernels are then applied to the soil
beneath the plant canopy, where the fungus colonizes the barley and
establishes itself to compete against toxigenic strains of A. flavus
that are naturally present. Other strains of A. flavus, as well as A.
parasiticus, are the primary producers of aflatoxin.

Afla-Guard, in field trials, reduced aflatoxin typically 70 to 90
percent after the first application. Repeated applications in subsequent
years reduced aflatoxin by as much as 98 percent.

COGI has agreements with peanut shelling companies to provide Afla-Guard to growers in Alabama and Georgia for treatment of 7,000 to 8,000 acres this year. More will be available in future years. Until now, there were no chemical or biological applications that farmers could put on their peanut crops to protect them from aflatoxin.

Aflatoxin outbreaks occur when certain crops, like peanuts and corn, are stressed by drought conditions.
 

Contact:

Sharon Durham
Agricultural Research Service, USDA
(301) 504-1611

sdurham@ars.usda.gov