(1334-C) Leveraging Hamilton Liquid Handling Capabilities to Enable the High Throughput Preparation of Formulated Agricultural Products for Analysis and Characterization

Abstract: On a global scale, there is a strong demand for differentiated and diverse portfolios of crop protection products. To account for diverse climates, crop compositions, and resistance, the agricultural industry must be able to produce formulated products with unique characteristics to solve the farmer’s ever-changing need. To meet this demand, Corteva Agriscience is leveraging automated workflows to accelerate the development of new crop protection products. This innovative methodology for high throughput formulation development and characterization is enabled by utilizing the Hamilton Microlab STAR automated liquid handler. The Hamilton system’s precision and speed automate the traditionally labor-intensive and time-consuming process of preparing formulations, such as fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, for characterization. This includes the extensive dilution preparation required to enable LC-MS/MS analysis, a critical step in ensuring accurate characterization of the formulations. This approach allows for the rapid generation and analysis of many formulations and ensures consistency, reproducibility, and elimination of human error. This significant acceleration of the development timeline shows the potential to revolutionize formulation development processes in the agricultural industry.