I’m interested in purchasing a bottle of pristine, is there any available or anyone interested in making a group purchase? Thanks in advance.
Make friends with a local farmer, they’re usually very open handed. It’s used by a very wide range of growers too.
Pristine fungicide is exactly why i stopped eating non organic strawberries and most other berries. I do not understand how its allowed to be used day of harvest but if your a worker you need to wear full scale PPE for five days on grape vines and many brambles workers have had allergic reactions after sprays.
I apologize for butting in I just wonder how safe this product actually is and wonder if its much more dangerous (or effective) than the more common fungicides that people have a REI and are aware of its residual. My understanding is this product is banned in europe and the grape lobby there is as strong as our grape lobby. I don’t live somewhere with high bacterial and fungal pressure so my advice probably doesn’t matter but i think its important for our practices to be sustained and not be actively building Superbugs and Supermildews. I always advocate for sulfur and copper sprays because of hundreds and hundreds of years of successful use as well as bio control from products like double nickel, compost tea or vinegar sprays etc…
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Can someone please tell me the dosage per gallon for Pristine for pome and stonefruit? Don’t know how to convert the by acre into gallons
The dosage would be 0.478 oz/gallon. Or 13.4 g per gallon. It is a solid, so those are masses and not volumes.
I am basing that off of the 2 fl oz per gallon of the Bonide Fruit Tree and Plant Guard product that has Pristine in it.
The most popular fungicide with a zero day PHI is Captan. I believe its under review by EPA at the moment. I have never understood how you can have a zero day PHI and REI that requires worker protection during zero day picking. I believe the REI for Pristine on Pome or Stone fruit is 24 hours.
EDIT. I failed to mention that I use Pristine, Captan other fungicides. Without these fungicides I would produce zero sellable peaches or apples. I use the higher of the PHI or the REI to determine when I pick my fruit or allow it to be picked. So for a zero day PHI fungicide with a 24 hr REI, I would not pick it or allow it to be picked for at least 24 hours since it was sprayed. Based on the signal word on the product label, Captan (danger) would appear to be more dangerous than Pristine (caution.) I’m not sure if any of these fungicides are labeled for use in a greenhouse
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Pome and Stone fruit have slightly different rates. But the rates intersect at 14.5 oz/ac.
At that rate you’d be looking at about 0.073 oz. of Pristine per gallon of spray water (sprayed to the point of run-off). Remember granules don’t weigh as much as liquids, so you can’t use a volumetric measurement when measuring out your Pristine. You have to use a scale.
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Drew,
That would be a lot more than the label would allow. Pristine can be used on Pome and Stone fruits at 14.5 oz./ac. At the rate you list, you would have 14.5 oz. in 30 gal. of water. Spraying 30 gal. of water per acre is certainly doable, but it is about an 8X concentrate spray. That would take equipment most backyard growers do not possess.
Mark,
Hmm… Interesting. I agree that it seems like a lot and you have me a bit worried that I did the calculation wrong. I feel like I might have done this calculation on here before. And that we might have come to the conclusion that the Bonide product is quite concentrated when mixed according to the label.
Here is my work:
2 fl oz Bonide/gal * 0.0306 oz pyraclostrobin/fl oz Bonide = 0.0612 oz pyraclostrobin/gallon
(Here I assume that 1 fl oz of bonide ~ 1 oz by weight being in the dilute form and in water).
In Pristine: 0.128 oz pyraclostrobin/oz Pristine
0.0612 oz pyraclostrobin/gallon * (1 oz Pristine/0.128 oz pyraclostrobin) = 0.478 oz Pristine/gallon
8x higher for the Bonide product is crazy if true.
Do you use Warrior or another product with lambda cyhalothrin in it? I would be interested in comparing the labeled ag rate with the Bonide rate.
Drew
Here is my discussion of Bonide Fruit Tree and Plant Guard having much more lambda-cyhalothrin than Triazicide (the gamma form) when mixed according to the label. So it is more concentrated than Triazicide too.
I sadly sold pristine to a customer who ordered it. I explained to them that my chemical distributor personally feels like the product is more toxic than myclobutanil, which didn’t make sense since he was reccomended to spray strawberries the day of harvest with them and was assured this is normal practice and keeps the berries looking nice on the shelf. My customer had a very bad allergic reaction and after calls to the company we found it is not allowed to be used in greenhouse cultivation because without any uv the product would “never breakdown”. So what happens to the liquid that gets into the soil i wonder? If i remember correctly there is a UN mandate on the product for grapes that anyone working with vines wears full scale PPEs for 5 days (So multi layers of coveralls gloves goggles taped up) because so many migrant workers were having very bad reactions.
Personally i feel they do not sell this product in smaller bottles or more consumer friendly ways because once more of the public uses and has reactions to this product I assume it will be pulled for food crops like other countries. Its crazy bonide does. When i asked about why it can be sprayed on day of harvest even though you had to wear PPE’s he said that by the time it gets to market you can detect absolutely zero pristine on the fruit. When asked about what it broke down and whether that was detectable and why no greenhouse use if you can spray it and harvest it and put the berries in a cold storage he was unsure.
Drew,
I arrived at the same rate you did using the Bonide label (by a slightly different mathematical means).
So in other words, using the Bonide label, you are correct in the dosage of Pristine (however, as I’m sure you recognize, the levels of Boscalid and Pyraclostrobin are in slightly different ratios on Bonide vs. Pristine.)
Here’s the caveat though. If you look at the rate per area on the Bonide label (not the rate per gallon) the rates pretty much match up with the Pristine label. In other words, the Bonide label does expect to spray about 30 gal of spray solution per acre (even though the label clearly says on the Bonide label to spray to the point of run-off).
This seems to be such a clear contradiction in the label that I think it’s a mistake. Either that or they are assuming Joe six pack is going to put a couple a couple fluid ounces in his one gallon pump up sprayer and lightly mist his one apple tree in his back yard. Still that doesn’t explain why the label would instruct to spray to the point of run off.
All that said, I would not use the rate per gallon on the Bonide label. I would use the rate per area. These two are vastly different on the Bonide label. If I were going to mix via rate per gallon, I would go with the rate I mentioned above (0.073 oz/gal). That should give a more reasonable amount of product on the foliage.
Btw, I do use Warrior II, and checked those rates against the Bonide. Comes to roughly the same calculations as the Pristine component. That is, apply by the rate per area, not the convoluted rate per gallon on the Bonide label. Or use the 0.073 oz/gal rate.
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The bacterial action in soil breaks down most pesticides more quickly than sunlight.
Many people are allergic to milk, so don’t confuse an allergic reaction to dangerous toxicity.
Europe’s decisions are based less on corporate political influence, but this isn’t ALWAYS a good thing because it is a fashion now to be extremely cautious about all pesticides used in agriculture and limited evidence now receives much more attention than it would otherwise. Consider how evidence is constantly contradicting previous research in terms of diet recommendations to understand the problem with a hair trigger.
Even in the USA, far more attention is placed on testing agricultural pesticides than other potential and known toxins that are brought into our homes through cleaning products, wood preservatives, furniture padding (types of synthetic foam), food packaging etc.
As far as providing the compound for home growers, that requires another extremely expensive process of licensing, so some products that are as safe or safer than pesticides already sold to the general public are not marketed there. Myclobutanil used to be only packaged for the Ag business and commercial sprayers. It seemed like they got the other licensing when it was losing efficacy in commercial production.
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Here are some things to consider about Pristine fungicide.
It is classified as a Reduced Risk pesticide by the EPA. To obtain the Reduced Risk classification, the product must be safer for humans and have a lower impact on the environment than comparable pesticides.
I’m not aware that Pristine has been banned in the EU. If it has, that still means basically nothing. The EU is not ahead of the U.S. in sensible pesticide regulation, many of the EU nations are simply buckling to populist pressure. The recent decision of rules to allow banning of any endocrine disruptors without regard to potency is the latest evidence of this, as is their panic driven approach to ban all neonics because of colony collapse. Should the EU continue down this path, they will only collapse their agriculture, probably with eventual riots greater than what we’ve seen recently in France.
It costs 280 million Euros to register a pesticide in the EU. Many companies can’t recoup the cost, especially for specialty crops. As such, there are very few pesticides in the registration pipeline, even as the EU removes more pesticides. European farmers are already reporting more crop losses because they no longer have the tools to protect crops. People do not realize the amount of crop losses suffered before the advent of synthetic pesticides.
Anecdotal stories about worker reactions should not be used to evaluate the relative safety of a pesticide. I spray captan fungicide with an airblast. Personally, I react pretty severely to it. The fog burns the eyes and nose (respirator is not required PPE). Even waiting the required 24 hr. REI, it burns my eyes when thinning peaches. Believe me, I’d much rather spray Pristine (and have before) than Captan. Much much easier on the senses. The problem is that Pristine is practically cost prohibitive and it is so much at risk of fungicide resistance, it can be used very little on a commercial basis. Captan is still by far the best option for widespread fungi control on specialty crops. I hope the EPA considers this as they are re-reviewing Captan fungicide.
On a professional forum, one grower mentioned one of their workers had to be hospitalized for spraying sulfur (organically approved). Yet few people seem to be worried about the human health risk of sulfur, or the environmental impact.
I know of one grower who told me if he sprayed Warrior in an open cab tractor, he felt like his skin had been through a sand storm. (I use Warrior II with the encapsulated technology, which minimizes skin reactions.)
The point is, at the dosage applicators are exposed to, there is likely to be some reaction to anything but the most inert substances. This is no indication of the long term danger of the poison. I react to a bee sting, but I’m not aware bee keepers with repeated exposure to bee sting poison live shorter lives.
Any pesticide in an enclosure like a greenhouse, should be used with extreme caution, and only under the appropriate label restrictions.
The reason why a pesticide may have a REI and have a zero day PHI is because the workers have a vastly larger exposure of the pesticide in question than a person simply eating a piece of fruit with some residue.
When you are sweating and constantly rubbing against the pesticide coated foliage for 8-10 hrs/day, you end up with it in your eyes, ears, clothes, and breathing it all day. For this reason the EPA requires the use of PPE when working or harvesting the field before the REI is up.
Some crops like blueberries can be harvested by machine and don’t require PPE to harvest within the REI.
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You really hit on something there that i would like to point out about pristine actively building fungal resistance and getting a fast track by the EPA, why?
As far as europe goes we have 320m people to feed and Europe has 500m. Europe uses 175m hectacres of farmland with most of there farms being under 16 hectacres and our average is 140 and we use a total of 170m hectacres (Roughly 40% of both in terms of landmass). My understanding is europe only imports soy and beef from us. We import much more food than europe although we also export more grains (mainly to africa and china as europe wont buy our agriculture) They export more cheese, wine fruits and vegetables. While i know european farmers have had crop losses with far reduced pesticides and fungicide options haven’t US farmers experienced similar crop losses? It seems like europe is doing a much better job at feeding there people and relying on less imports than we are doing here in the US. I know I am personally afraid of the US importing chicken and pork from china and im unsure of why these options are even on the table in terms of safety and us ranchers being forced to cut costs and standards to stay profitable.
The protests in france were directly linked to Austerity and gaslighting by the french government to the people by telling them they need to pay more for gas because of global warming instead of making changes at the top level that actually affect carbon emissions.
As a kid i was told in colorado we will harvest as many apples in a whole season as california does the first day they pick apples, im not sure if that is true but i bet its pretty close. I do understand people have allergic reactions to things and that is different than toxicity. However a allergic reaction to inhaling too much sulfur and pristine are pretty different beasts. Sulfur is required by your RNA on a daily basis and is a essential element in every single plant and animal. Copper is also a essential element. Certainly over and improper use of these is bad but its not my understanding that 500 years of using these has created any super mildews while I am positive that we are actively evolving and naturally selecting the most pernicious mildews and molds when we use pristine.
I apologize for derailing the thread, I had a very bad personal experience with Pristine and i have never sold something to someone that made them sick.
What , the whole 51 country Europe? I use Pristine with good results and never been sick form it’s use.
Thats the EU-28 and includes britain
The discussion is really starting to go off the topic of Pristine with discussing ag imports and exports for the EU vs. U.S. It gets very complicated with how much product is value added, and many other factors in valuing the food grown.
I’ll just mention a couple things. The EU has an agricultural trade deficit of about 17 billion Euros (They import mostly fruits and vegetables). The U.S. has an agricultural trade surplus of about 20 billion dollars.
In reality both EU and the USA have agricultural models based on industrialized agriculture. That is, substituting capital equipment for labor, heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers for improved yield, and pesticides to minimize crop loss.
The regulatory direction the EU is taking towards pesticides is what I commented on.
http://www.forumphyto.fr/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/1606RedqueenIntegralVersionENG.pdf
The issue of fungicides making “super” fungi and mildews, and how that could affect us or the planet, is a highly speculative area. I doubt it has near the ramifications of “super” resistant bacteria, which is mostly referred to when talking about “super bugs”. Questions of how many pathogenic plant fungi could possibly infect people, how much gene transfer from a pathogenic plant fungi to a pathogenic human fungi, how fast new developments in technology could address the issues, are just some of the questions. This area is beyond my area of any expertise, so I don’t think discussions between two non-experts would be very fruitful. I will mention I think one key difference between drugs used to treat bacterial infections, vs fungal infections is that antibiotics have a fairly narrow range of activity, whereas there are lots of fungicides with multiple modes of actions.
Strangely, the fungicides with more narrow modes of actions, tend to be the ones safest for people and the environment. They are also the ones most prone to develop resistance. While fungicides with multiple modes of action, like Captan or Chlorothalonil, are least likely to develop resistance, but tend to be a bit more hazardous.
Fungi pathogens in specialty crops have been developing resistance to single action mode fungicides for the last 60 years (i.e. Topsin M) whereas Captan with multiple modes of actions still works on the resistant fungi.
My point in mentioning the sulfur was merely to illustrate that anecdotal reaction to a pesticide is no basis to evaluate the relative safety of a pesticide compound. For that, we need good toxicology, epidemiological, and risk assessment studies.
This is good news to me. I will have to do the area calculations when my new orchard is planted and in need of fruit protection.
The major issue I have with the Bonide product was that it is expensive and didn’t go far. I also have my concerns about year-to-year stability with the cyhalothrin given the reports of its instability in Triazicide. So my approach is to buy the smallest bottle, but that doesn’t net savings on quantity.
Also if I can get away with using much less Bonide product, then there is no way I need to spring for 7.5 lbs of Pristine.
I like the product as the last codling moth spray and as a cover against the onslaught of Japanese beetles in early July. It is also supposedly excellent for summer diseases of apples. In my evolving, and now on hold, approach to orcharding the Bonide spray is the only synthetic I plan to use during the growing season. I see using chlorothalonil in the late fall for PLC as my other synthetic, as it is just so much more effective for me and more available at lower quantities than copper hydroxide products.
I’m not surprised, based on my results, that the the mix rate is too high on the Bonide label. With a single spray in early July two years ago I got about 4 weeks of Japanese beetle control and completely stamped out all traces of sooty blotch and flyspeck for the whole season. I think a good stretch of that we were much drier than normal, but we did have some rain. The results at that rate were impressive.
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Olpea i want to say that i absolutely respect you and very much respect that you make your entire living off of agriculture and that is something that is my goal also. Obviously Pristine works much better for you and several other people on here and around the US as well. As far as the food imports with the US and the EU goes i believe the US has much more productive farmland and we have way less diseases than they have in europe by being connected to asia as well as most bugs being able to run up africa into italy. This is just a belief of mine that California and florida properly farmed could feed the entire USA, however both the USA and Europe import many foods throughout the winter and it would be hard to change this they are in general a bit farther north than us so i think we edge them out there as well. Still its my understanding that we import more food than they do and we only feed 320m vs 500m people food. I also feel europe beats us at making more nutritious food.
Certainly we produce more crops but alot of those aren’t what americans eat. I also agree with you on the need for studies and understand that when we bottom dollar our produce we kind of start a race to the bottom at doing whats cheapest and not whats best for us the consumer or the planet. The nice thing about Organic is that it will atleast reward you monetarily for what you grow. I realize in your area that may not be possible, but 60-70 years ago everything was organic and there were orchards out in the kc/mo area then. So either something has changed like superbugs a total loss of beneficial predators and us growing things that are not naturally suited to our environment or maybe its just our perspective and the cost (Crop loss and diversity change requirements) of going natural is prohibitive. Its my understanding that the EU organic certification is easier to get and there is less punishment for farmers that need to go non organic for a year or two because of pest or fungal infections. I agree with you that we need risk assessment studies and it seems crazy to me that companies who own chemical companies can be the ones to run these studies.
Alan i would also like to say that i definitely agree with you on us being exposed to many more toxins other than just pesticides/fungicides that are probably worse in our homes (Building materials especially the newer ones) and our general lives as well as plastic clothes and sheets. And its why building stuff yourself and buying real wood / stone / metal things that will last is very much worthwhile.