EPA Grants Permanent Sugar Beet Tolerance for UPL’s Herbicide Acifluorfen, Ending Annual Emergency Exemptions

30 September 2026, Washington, D.C.: The US Environmental Protection Agency has established a permanent pesticide tolerance for residues of the herbicide acifluorfen, in its sodium salt form, on sugar beet roots, closing out years of temporary, emergency-only access to the chemical for sugar beet growers. The rule, requested by UPL NA Inc., the US arm of Mumbai-headquartered agrochemical group UPL, was published in the Federal Register on September 29, 2026, and took effect the same day.

The new tolerance sets a maximum residue limit of 0.06 parts per million for sugar beet roots. At the same time, EPA revoked the older, narrower tolerances of 0.1 ppm for sugar beet roots and tops that had applied only under Section 18 emergency exemptions, the mechanism EPA uses to allow short-term, year-by-year use of an unregistered pesticide use when growers face an urgent pest problem and lack registered alternatives. The agency also withdrew a proposed tolerance for sugar beet tops after concluding that crop residue is not a significant livestock feed item, so the permanent tolerance applies only to the root, which is processed into sugar.

Acifluorfen, sold since the 1980s under the brand name Blazer, belongs to a class of herbicides called PPO inhibitors, which block an enzyme plants need to build chlorophyll, causing treated weeds to die from a buildup of a light-reactive compound in their cells. It has long been registered for use on soybeans, peanuts, peas and rice to control broadleaf weeds such as pigweed and morning glory, but sugar beet was not traditionally among its labeled crops, so growers had relied on annual emergency exemptions to use it as an extra tool against tough broadleaf weeds in recent seasons.

Converting an emergency-use tolerance into a permanent one is a routine but consequential step in US pesticide regulation, because it gives growers, and the sugar processors who buy their crop, certainty that a chemistry will remain legally available season to season, rather than depending on a grower group successfully petitioning EPA for a fresh exemption every year. For UPL, the tolerance also formalizes a US sugar beet use for a herbicide that is already a meaningful part of its broader soybean herbicide portfolio.

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