By Bob West
California’s farmers reported making nearly 3.2 million applications of 3,289 different restricted-use products in 2025, according to the latest data published on Meister Media’s PURE Intel platform. That means making roughly 3.2 million decisions about which product to apply. Growers undoubtedly trust each other more than anyone else when it comes to identifying the products that perform best so let’s look at the products growers applied to the most acres last year.
Despite all of noise around its use in recent years, California farmers have reported more treated acres of glyphosate over the past five years than of any other active ingredient so seeing RoundUp PowerMAX® 3 as the most widely used product is not particularly surprising. In fact, last year was the second consecutive year that RoundUp PowerMAX® 3 topped this list as the potassium salt version of glyphosate replaces the isopropylamine salt active ingredient in RoundUp PowerMAX.
UPL’s Microthiol® Disperss biofungicide was again the top sulfur product in California, a position that the product has held for a number of years.
Meanwhile, BASF’s Merivon® Xemium® fungicide led the way for non-sulfur disease-control products for the fifth consecutive year with roughly 60% more treated acres any other conventional fungicide in 2025.
In terms of insect-control solutions, the popular active ingredient methoxyfenozide went off patent in recent years, but growers have remained loyal to Intrepid 2F, Corteva’s methoxyfenozide brand. In fact, Intrepid posted 5% year-over-year growth in treated acres in 2025 as it remains the only insecticide to enjoy more than 1 million treated acres in a single year in California.
For the fifth consecutive year a new adjuvant won the battle for the most widely applied adjuvant. Vintre® from Rovensa Next narrowly took the crown from CPS’ LI 700 in 2025 while Helena’s Dyne-Amic and CPS’ Activator 90 also posted strong years after recently topping the field.
Bob West is Meister Media’s Chief Content Office and Director for its data business. For more information about this data or for more details about Meister’s PURE Intel+ and PURE Intel+ PCA products, contact him at 440-602-9129 or [email protected].
PURE Intel is a trademark of Meister Media Worldwide.
About PURE Intel
Meister Media’s PURE Intel platform offers subscribers comprehensive insights into California’s specialty agriculture market by aggregating monthly crop protection product application data from approximately 20,000 California farms and providing that data through a user-friendly, web-based platform that enables subscribers to customize their data queries.