Agricultural Adjuvants Market Expected to Reach $6.4 Billion by 2031—Allied Market Research

According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, “Agricultural Adjuvants Market," The agricultural adjuvants market was valued at $3.5 billion in 2021, and is estimated to reach $6.4 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 6.1% from 2022 to 2031.

Agricultural adjuvants are chemical products that are added with insecticide, pesticide, and other crop protection products to enhance effectiveness. In addition, adjuvants improve mixing and application of agrochemical products. Activators, spray modifiers, and utility modifiers are three types of agricultural adjuvants available in the market.     

Pesticide, a type of crop protection product, has to overcome several obstacles to impart maximum effectiveness. For instance, sprayed pesticide may bead up and tend to roll out from leaves that in turn minimizes effectiveness and makes sprayed pesticide formulation less effective. Moreover, presence of leaf hairs and cuticular waxy leaf structure prohibits sprayed pesticide from reaching the target. In addition, the spray solution and plants should have proper contact for ensuring effective penetration of active ingredients from the pesticide. Formation of foam during pesticide mixing is another factor that prevents proper contact between spray solution and plant surface. Use of agricultural adjuvants during pesticide formulation and mixing tend to minimize all the risk associated during pesticide formulation, making pesticide formulation more effective. These are the major agricultural adjuvants market growth factors. 

However, tank mix adjuvants tend to impart negative effect on the non-target species, thereby hampering the crop production. Moreover, toxicity associated with use of agrochemicals is another considerable factor that is anticipated to hamper the market growth.

There are several methods and chemicals used for crop protection. Spraying pesticide is one process that is considered under the integrated pest management sector. However, spraying pesticides on crops may be not effective owing to challenges associated with chemical nature of agrochemical mixture, unfavorable climatic conditions, and difficulty with the technical spray process associated. Agricultural adjuvants are effective and can be added for enhancing performance of the tank mix agrochemicals is the major agricultural adjuvants market trend. Farmers across the globe are using advanced and traditional technologies for spraying agrochemicals. However, during windy weather conditions, the risk of spray mix being blown away is high. This in turn minimizes the efficiency of the disease control and leads to contamination of the environment. Even under minimal wind speed, smaller agrochemical droplets tend to drift away from the leaf structure. However, to overcome such problems, farmers tend to set spray nozzle, such that it should spray large droplets of agrochemical mixture. This mechanical procedure tends reduce the drift to some extent and in turn sprays too large droplets that tend to run off from the leaf surface. Thus, tank mix adjuvants are preferred and widely used to control the drift of sprayed agrochemicals. Use of adjuvants help to alter physical properties of the spray liquid and makes droplet size distribution uniform and narrow. This factor has escalated the demand for and use of agricultural adjuvants, which is anticipated to offer new opportunities in the global market.   

The agricultural adjuvants market analysis is done on the basis of product type, utilization type, application, and region. By product type, the market is segregated into activators, spray modifiers, and utility modifier. The activators segment dominated the global market in terms of revenue in 2021, with over 61% of the total share.  Activators are adjuvants that are used to alter particle size, viscosity, evaporation rate, and other characteristics of agrochemicals. Pesticides, herbicides, or other agrochemical help to enhance the growth of crop and eliminate growth of pests and other crop harming disease. However, these agrochemicals are used in the form of solutions and sprayed over crops. Addition of surfactant adjuvants along with these agrochemical solutions enables the sprayed solution to spread effectively and in turn, minimizes the surface tension of agrochemical solution. Thereby effectively helping the solution to reach the target area.

By utilization type, the market is divided into tank-mix adjuvants and in-can adjuvants (built-in adjuvants). The tank-mix adjuvants segment dominated the global market in terms of revenue in 2021, with over 74% of the total share. Tank-mix adjuvants are type of adjuvants that are added separately into the spray tank along with the use of other agrochemicals. Tank-mix adjuvants are capable of increasing and enhancing the performance of agrochemicals or plant protection products. These adjuvants are proven to enhance retention, liquid droplet spreading, wetting of sprayed agrochemicals, and penetration of agrochemicals. Cereal crops, such as triticale, wheat, and others are prone to Fusarium problem and to prevent this problem, farmers tend to use fungicides. However, owing to improper deposition and spreading of sprayed herbicides, few cultivated cereals are vulnerable to Fusarium problem.

By application, the global agricultural adjuvants market is classified into pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, and others. The herbicides segment dominated the global market in terms of revenue in 2021, with 49% of the total share. Herbicide adjuvant is a type of additive that is envisioned to improve overall effectiveness of an herbicide. However, addition of adjuvants is not required with some herbicides and some herbicides need addition of adjuvants to enhance the performance. Use of adjuvants to improve physical characteristics of herbicide formulation is the key market trend. In addition, use of activator adjuvants tend to increase herbicide absorption rate by plants, minimizes photodegradation, and improves herbicide rainfastness characteristics. Herbicide spray characteristics is utmost important to enhance its effectiveness and improve crop yield. Thus, use of activator adjuvants are proven to improve and alter physical characteristic of herbicide spray solution, which drives the demand for agricultural adjuvants in herbicide application.

Region-wise, the agricultural adjuvants market is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA. The Asia-Pacific agricultural adjuvants market size is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period and accounted for agricultural adjuvants market share in 2021. The Indian agriculture industry plays an important role in the economy growth and half of the livelihood is dependent on the agriculture sector. In addition, agricultural resources in term of size & diversity is another considerable factor driving the demand for agriculture industry across India. Moreover, India is the largest producer of spices, cereals, pulses, and jute. Growing demand for staple food and other food products has pushed the need for high crop yield. Despite the support from governmental and private organizations to support the agricultural production, factors such as fragmented landholding, low productivity, lack of irrigation facilities, and low awareness regarding use of agrochemicals limit the growth of the agricultural industry. Adjuvant-based pesticides are proven to facilitate and improve emulsifying characteristic, dispersion, wetting, and modifies other surface properties of the spray liquid.

Key players operating in the global agricultural adjuvants market include, BASF SE, Corteva, Croda International Plc, Evonik Industries, GarrCo Products Inc., Helena Agri-Enterprises LLC, Loveland Products Inc., Nufarm, Solvay Inc., and WinField Solutions LLC. In addition, The global agricultural adjuvants Industry report provides in-depth competitive analysis as well as profiles of these major players

Key findings of the study

• By product type, the activators segment is estimated to display the highest growth rate, in terms of revenue, registering a CAGR of 6.4% from 2022 to 2031.
• By utilization type, tank-mix adjuvants garnered the highest share of 74% in 2021, in terms of revenue, growing at a CAGR of 6.3%.
• By application, the insecticide application is estimated to display the highest growth rate, in terms of revenue, registering a CAGR of 6.5% from 2022 to 2031.
• By region, Asia-Pacific garnered the highest share of 37% in 2021, in terms of revenue, growing at a CAGR of 7.2%.