Insecticides took the lead in January with 32 patents out of 98. In addition to fungicides (22), herbicides (28) and combined fungicide/insecticide products (8), there were five patents related to plant growth regulators (PGRs). More than half the patents published were for mixtures, with a similar number of patents mentioning new derivatives or compounds of already known families.

BASF had no patents published with herbicidal activity while Bayer CropScience had almost half of its published patents in that area. Syngenta, on the other hand, showed activity around fungicidal active ingredients and mixtures. Ishihara Sangyo Kaisha again published another patent around the previously reported anthranilamide compound. This new patent has a reduced number of claims.

Among the companies with published patents last month, Bayer CropScience as usual took the lead with a total of 29 patents, of which 14 were related to herbicidal activity. Syngenta followed with a total of 16 patents, and BASF remained close behind with 12. Other companies with more than two published patents were Sumitomo Chemical (11), Valent BioSciences (3) and DuPont (2).
The complete list of patents consulted for the purpose of this analysis is available here