One herbicide, two fungicides: It was as many new chemicals at a Cereals event for some time.

All three – Dow’s Broadway Sunrise herbicide, Bayer’s Xpro and Syngenta’s isopyrazam fungicides – should be available next season, approvals permitting.

It is probably fair to say the herbicide Broadway Sunrise is likely to make the least impression. It is a grassweed herbicide, with a real strength in its broadleaved weed control and the fact that it has much more following crop and cultivation flexibility than Atlantis.

Based on pyroxsulam, it also contains pendimethalin, which gives it some blackgrass activity to go with the brome, ryegrass and wild oat control, growers will have seen with sister product, Broadway Star.

Unfortunately the blackgrass activity is not strong enough to make it a true rival to Atlantis. With a similar mode of action to the market leader, Dow’s Stuart Jackson admitted that it shouldn’t be used in places where that product was struggling.

In fact, it should be positioned in situations where other grass weeds are the main target and there is only a low level of blackgrass present, which isn’t the primary target. That will limit its appeal.

It should also be used as an autumn spray for best effect, unlike Broadway Star, which is also effective in the spring. It probably means Broadway Sunrise will be most used where sufficient sterile brome, or possibly ryegrass, has emerged in the autumn to warrant spraying, where there is also a background population of blackgrass.

But in the same way as growers have struggled to apply Atlantis at the right growth stage before the winter closes in, Broadway Sunrise might also suffer from the same restriction. Certainly Mr Jackson said it needed active growth, and that could leave growers looking for spring options, which also might be favoured by less concern over late-germinating weeds.

The two fungicides are much less likely to end up as niche products. The trials evidence for both appears strong. Independent wheat trials of the Bayer Xpro fungicide, which contains the carboxamide (SDHI) bixafen and prothioconazole, have shown around on average 15% better septoria control than current standards, such as Tracker, Firefly or Comet + Opus.

Similarly good performance has been seen on other diseases, particularly rhynchosporium for the barley version of the Xpro fungicides. That has translated into 0.6t/ha extra yield in wheat and 0.25t/ha in barley over current standards.

In wheat the product was going to be targeted at the T2 timing, Bayer’s Alison Daniels said, where its extra persistence could help growers with T3 timing and product choice.

Syngenta’s isopyrazam fungicide, in contrast, was likely to be targeted at T1 and T2. Its disease spectrum included septoria, rusts, eyespot and mildew, the firm’s Dave Ranner said.

Another difference from bixafen is that isopyrazam will be available as a straight in wheat, whereas bixafen will only be in a co-formulation. But the likelihood is there will be a label restriction requiring it to be tank-mixed with another mode of action – a sensible approach given that it has a single site mode of action, just like strobilurin fungicides.

Both firms made a play at Cereals about their product’s formulation.

Syngenta described how it had optimised the structure of isopyrazam to increase its potency. Andy Corran explained how chemists had modelled how the active ingredient bound into the target site and then enhanced the fungicide to bind even more strongly to give extra potency against septoria and rusts. It also binds strongly to the leaf wax increasing persistency.

Xpro has a patented triple adjuvant formulation, which Bayer claims helps the spray droplet stick on to waxy leaf surfaces and the fungus. It also spreads rapidly over large leaf areas for quick coverage and excellent rainfastness.

According to Dr Daniels, it is so effective that application is less critical with Xpro, working at low water volumes, different nozzle types and fast moving sprayers.

Whether that is true when the products are used commercially remains to be seen, but there seems little doubt these fungicides, and others in the same group being developed by DuPont and BASF, are likely to become major players in the next few seasons – as long as they are used to avoid resistance building and priced carefully.