Fungicides took the lead in the March patent watch with 50 out of the 110 published patents for the month. Insecticides followed with 32 patents and herbicides at 16. There were ten patents related to combined fungicide/insecticide products and two patents to a combined fungicide/herbicide product.

Among the companies with published patents in March, Bayer CropScience as usual led with a total of 31 patents, of which ten were fungicide-related. BASF followed close behind with 27 patents and Sumitomo Chemical with 12. Other companies with more than two published patents were Dow AgroSciences (nine), Syngenta (seven), DuPont (four), and Mitsui Chemicals (three).

Bayer showed particular activity again, as in February, in herbicidal combinations based on dimethoxy-triazinyl-substituted difluoromethane sulfonyl anilide compounds. There were seven published patents in March related to those compounds. BASF had 12 patents published around imidazole and triazole compounds with an emphasis on triazole compounds with fungicidal activity.
Sumitomo still seems to be researching amide derivatives with fungicidal activity, claiming four published patents for the month, and Dow is researching insecticidal n-substituted sulfoximines, also achieving four patents.
The complete list of patents consulted for the purpose of this analysis is available here