Relative to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s recently-filed motion to revoke the registration of Enlist Duo herbicide, the Dow Chemical Company says it is “confident in the extensive data supporting this new technology” and is “working quickly with EPA to provide assurances that our product’s conditions of registered use will continue to protect the environment, including threatened and endangered plant species.”
EPA approved Enlist Duo in several states over a year ago, but last week made a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California to revoke the registration, saying its assessment of the product’s two active ingredients was incomplete.
Enlist Duo combines glyphosate with the herbicide 2,4-D, for use on corn and soybeans. The EPA wants to examine Enlist Duo further in light of Dow’s claim that the two active ingredients work in combination with one another, according to the court documents. EPA said its approval of the product had assumed the components did not have “synergistic effects.”
“The information suggests that EPA’s analysis may have understated the phytotoxicity of the product,” the EPA states in its court filing.
“We believe the questions that have been raised about any potential synergy between 2,4-D choline and glyphosate can be promptly resolved in the next few months, in time for the 2016 crop use season,” said Tim Hassinger, Dow AgroSciences president and CEO.
“It’s possible that we could see some changes to use conditions on the existing Enlist Duo label,” Hassinger added. “However, based on the ongoing dialogue with EPA, we do not expect these issues to result in the long-term cancellation of the Enlist Duo product registration. We continue to prepare for commercial sales of Enlist Duo for the 2016 growing season with enthusiastic grower adoption.”
Evaluations of potential synergy from herbicidal mixtures are common within the crop protection industry and are not unique to Dow AgroSciences or Enlist Duo, Dow says in a news release. EPA has not used observations of potential synergy in mixtures as a basis for regulatory action. Technology providers, like Dow AgroSciences, have commonly filed patent applications on mixtures, without there being any connection to EPA’s regulatory processes, the company notes.
“EPA now has all of the data developed by Dow AgroSciences on observed potential synergies between 2,4-D choline and glyphosate in Enlist Duo,” Hassinger added. “From these data, EPA will readily see – after evaluating all of the efficacy data on the final formulation – why these data support the registration of Enlist Duo.”
