Discovery and Synthesis of Crop Protection Products

Modern agribusiness is one of the main generators of employment and income worldwide and plays a vital role in improving the production, quality, and quantity of food, feed, fiber, and fuel ensuring our world has the safest and most nutritious, abundant, and sustainable food supply possible. The global agribusiness industry with its offerings such as insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides as well as biotechnology products contributes to growing public expectations for food security and agricultural sustainability while addressing the industry's global challenges, such as population growth and rising caloric consumption, increasing environmental stresses across the globe, a changing regulatory landscape, development of resistance to existing active ingredients and traits by investing in effective R&D programs and inventing new solutions.

The book provides an update on state of the art crop protection research and highlights the pivotal role of novel chemistries for modern crop protection. Recent research and new directions in the synthesis and chemistry of agrochemicals, as well as new research approaches, tools and directions in the crop protection field including nematicides, biologicals and natural products are described and details on the design, synthesis, biology and/or structure-activity relationships of a series of new chemical entities targeting fungicides, insecticides, herbicides and nematicides provided. Furthermore future directions for advancing research and regulation of agricultural chemistry and pest management science, promoting public health, and preserving environmental quality are covered as well.

Dr. Peter Maienfisch, Research Portfolio Manager Insecticides & Seedcare, studied chemistry at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, where he received his PhD in 1983. After a post-doctoral stay at Caltech (Pasadena, CA, USA) Peter joined Ciba-Geigy in Basel in 1984. In 2015, he became Honorary Professor of the East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST), Shanghai, China. Furthermore he is the inventor of thiamethoxam (ActaraR, CruiserR, one of the leading insecticides world-wide) and is a member of the Swiss & American Chemical Societies and the CHIMIA Editorial Board.

Dr. Thomas M. Stevenson graduated with a B.S. in chemistry from Saint Louis University in 1979 where he carried out undergraduate research with Harold A. Dieck funded by a Monsanto Summer Fellowship. He received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1983, under the supervision of Nelson J. Leonard. After postdoctoral research at the University of Geneva from 1983 to 1985 with Wolfgang Oppolzer, Stevenson joined DuPont Crop Protection as a research chemist, rising in ranks to his current position as senior research fellow