Surfactants play the role of wetting, dispersing, emulsifying and solutizing in pesticide processing, and have become one of the indispensable components of pesticide preparations, and are often called auxiliaries, emulsifiers, dispersants, auxiliary agents, etc., they can be a combination of a variety of surfactants.At present, pesticide formulations are developing in the direction of waterborne, granular, multi-functional, slow-release, labor-saving and fine, and some new formulations that are efficient, safe, economical and environmentally compatible, such as micro-emulsion, water emulsion, suspended emulsion, water dispersion granule, dry suspension agent, slow-release and other new formulations are emerging, and will be the mainstream of pesticide formulation development in the 21st century. The demand of surfactants for new dosage forms of pesticides will promote the production and development of surfactants for pesticides. Trends and directions of surfactants in agrochemicals in the next few years:

(1)According to the active characteristics of the original drug, the suspension agent no longer pursues high content, but turns to medium content, but the product must be given high wetting, high spreading and synergic properties. Put forward higher requirements for surfactants.

(2)Water emulsion products in the premise of ensuring the stability of the period, the pursuit of greatly reducing the surface tension of the spray solution, and give a moisturizing function. Pesticide water agents represented by glyphosate are developing products with higher content, and for this reason, the types of salts and supporting wetting penetrants are being further updated.

(3)The development and promotion of dispersible oil suspension products are growing rapidly, but at present, most products are unstable in suspension stability and self-dispersion quality, which must be solved as soon as possible.

(4)The development of suspended emulsions is beginning to heat up, and new drug combinations require surfactants that are more consistent with structural characteristics.

(5)The development of biopesticides and preparation varieties (WP, SC, WG) has accelerated, and the original fermentation product preparations containing protein and sugar, the existing agricultural surfactant product structure is no longer suitable, and the development must be accelerated.

The old pesticide varieties with benzene ring as the parent are replaced faster, and the newly developed pesticides are mostly heterocyclic compounds. Nowadays, low melting point pesticides are decreasing and high melting point pesticides are increasing. The number of preparations using light aromatic hydrocarbons as solvent is decreasing, and the structure of solvent is changing. The development of dosage forms such as high-content and solvent-free creams is accelerating. All these challenges to the old system of pesticide surfactants formed with benzene ring as the main structure and light aromatic hydrocarbons as the solvent. Agricultural surfactants must be innovative.