Agrauxine Experts – Shannon PIKE

Could you tell us more about your role and your daily missions at Agrauxine by Lesaffre?

On a daily basis, I’m in close contact with our key distributor representatives from Wilbur Ellis Company, throughout California and the Southwestern United States.  I’m always available to answer technical questions regarding our Romeo, Romeo CA, Smartfoil and Moka plant health products.  Every month I travel to meet associates and growers in California and support  our recently approved biofungicide product, Romeo CA.

Romeo CA is approved for use in California on almonds, grapes, leafy crops and cucurbits with additional label expansion to include peppers, tomatoes and berries.  We have had several years of success with this Cerevisane LAS 117 product in Arizona on leafy crops and now are focused on maximum exposure throughout California.

When I am in my “home” base of Queen Creek, Arizona, I am remotely engaged in various marketing, advertising, trade-show, forecasting functions and other industry activities, such as CAPCA, California Winegrape Growers Association and the Vineyard Team.

Could you tell us more about the development of Romeo CA since its approval and registration by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) in October 2022? How American growers are perceiving so far this new tool for preventing foliar fungal disease in their crops?

Since the approval of Romeo CA in California in Q4 of 2022, we have had excellent response from growers and industry members.

At the different meetings we attended these past 6 months (CAPCA Conference in Anaheim, Organic Growers Summit in Monterey, the 50th Annual Almond Board Conference and the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento), Romeo CA confirmed its assets for both conventional and organic Californian growers.

• Romeo CA is a unique non-living yeast strain that offers an interesting mode of action to control foliar fungal disesases: it boosts the plants’ disease response by activating their physical and biochemical defenses, helping them fight back against future fungal attacks. The synergy between an active immune response system and curative chemistry makes a dynamic combination for any fungicide concerns,
• It is OMRI approved,
• It is extremely compatible and performs consistently. Romeo CA works very well as a stand-alone preventive biofungicide in organic programs, but also has great efficacy when included in conventional IPM programs,
• Almond growers welcomed a product they can apply during bloom which is effective and also bee-friendly.

Growers and industry members are excited to have such an innovative and built-for-success preventive biofungicide product now available in California and several growers told us they have it planned in their programs this 2023 season.

Do you have in mind a contribution you are particularly proud of since you work at Agrauxine by Lesaffre?

I am particularly proud of my contribution to improve internal communications between French and US teams.

To ensure information was easily accessible, I developed a Teams platform to store meeting notes and documents specific to US needs. Many documents passed between individuals across global regions.

By easing communication with Product Managers and Researchers in France, it helped us respond more quickly to our key customers and distributors across the United States.

With the acquisition of ABM in 2021, the system proved even more useful. It made the transition smoother by enabling teams to work and communicate better with one another.

If I am proud of my contribution, my colleagues deserve to take the credit too. Because, if this system was successful, it’s only because they were receptive to improving communications.