The customer increasingly requires safer and more convenient pesticide formulations. Emulsifiable concentrates and wettable powders are nowadays viewed less favourably by farmers and registration authorities. Suspension concentrates are now common and water‐dispersible granules and emulsions in water are receiving increasing attention. Capsule suspensions offer both safer and more effective performance in favourable cases. For convenience the farmer requires multi‐component products, either as mixtures of active ingredients, which might be as suspoemulsions, or with built‐in enhancing surfactants and oils. Seed treatments are now required as aqueous suspensions and the seed is increasingly of interest as an eficient carrier for pesticides. Research into biological control agents sets the difficult challenge of formulating these products as viable organisms. Three examples of developments are described. These are the applications of polymeric surfactants for suspension concentrates and suspoemulsions, studies of enhancement of pesticide uptake with surfactants and developments in microencapsulation. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
