There is a yellow-labeled tin that has sat beside propagation benches for fifty years. Dip the cutting, tap off the excess, stick it. Thursday’s Federal Register cancelled it — all three strengths. Hortus USA’s Rhizopon AA #1, #2 and #3, the indole-3-butyric-acid rooting powders at 0.1, 0.3 and 0.8 percent, are on EPA’s latest cancellation order, along with ten other registrations including Sipcam’s Torrent G lambda-cyhalothrin granule and Scotts’ Ortho-line GC 19 herbicide. Three more products had uses cut instead of cancelled — most notably a technical-grade lambda-cyhalothrin that loses its domestic indoor and outdoor uses entirely.
Here is the part worth saying plainly to your customers, because the word “cancelled” does a lot of dishonest work in headlines: nothing on this list was pulled for a risk finding. These are voluntary cancellations under FIFRA section 6(f) — the registrants requested them, EPA published the request in February, four comments came in, three agreed and one was about a chemical not even on the list. Products mostly die this way now: not banned, just no longer worth the cost of keeping registered. The science didn’t end them. The paperwork did.
The registrants may continue to sell and distribute existing stocks of products listed in Table 1 of Unit II until August 6, 2027, which is 1 year after publication of this cancellation order in the Federal Register. … Persons other than the registrant may sell, distribute, or use existing stocks of canceled products and/or products whose labels include the terminated uses until supplies are exhausted.
Read as a supply chain, that paragraph is three different clocks. The maker can ship what is already packaged for one more year, until August 6, 2027. A distributor can sell what it holds until it runs out, whenever that is. And the grower can legally use what is in the shed until the last tin is empty, following the old label the whole way. For the amended products — the ones losing uses rather than dying outright — registrants get until February 7, 2028 on the old labeling. So nothing stops this week. What changed is the direction of travel: from Thursday forward, every unit of Rhizopon AA powder that exists is every unit that will ever exist.
One distinction your readers will get wrong without you: two of the flashier names on the list are state-level registrations only. The Kontos cancellation is the Texas special-local-need registration, not the federal product; same for the Oregon Rely 280. A grower in Ohio reading a headline about Kontos being “cancelled” needs the sentence you can now write: check the registration number on your label against the order, because that small number — not the brand name — is what was actually cancelled.
The amended-label products — including the lambda-cyhalothrin technical losing its domestic uses — ride a longer registrant clock, to February 7, 2028.
Three moves before the shelves decide for you. Check labels against the order — the registration number, not the brand: 63310-19, -20 and -21 are the Rhizopon powders, 60063-56 is Torrent G, 239-2785 is GC 19. Count and buy deliberately — if a cancelled product anchors your propagation program or your granular-insecticide rotation, a year of registrant sales plus distributor stock is your entire remaining supply; decide now whether to stockpile within shelf life or transition. Write the customer note — the grower who explains “voluntary cancellation, existing stocks legal, here is the timeline and here is our replacement plan” owns that conversation; the one who stays quiet inherits a panicked version of it from a headline.
Kept honest. Voluntary cancellation says nothing either way about safety — this order makes no risk finding, and drawing one from it in either direction would be invention. Lambda-cyhalothrin itself remains registered in many other products; what died Thursday is specific registrations, not the active ingredient. Other rooting-hormone products, including other IBA formulations, stay on the market — the loss is the specific powders propagators have habits around. And registrants sometimes cancel one line while selling a successor; whether Hortus intends one is not in this document, and I won’t guess.
Sources, all primary, all fetched today, August 10, 2026. (1) Environmental Protection Agency, Cancellation Order for Certain Pesticide Registrations and/or Amendments To Terminate Uses (From February 19, 2026, Notice), notice, 91 F R 50832–50834, F R Doc. 2026-16076, docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2025-0029, published August 6, 2026, effective August 6, 2026, signed by Charles Smith, Director, Registration Division, Office of Pesticide Programs — read in full from the govinfo PDF, 2026-16076.pdf. Source of every product, registration number, company and active ingredient named above (Table 1: Rhizopon AA #1/#2/#3, regs 63310-19/20/21, indole-3-butyric acid at 0.1/0.3/0.8 percent, Hortus USA Corp.; Torrent G, reg 60063-56, lambda-cyhalothrin 1.8 percent, Sipcam Agro; GC 19, reg 239-2785, The Scotts Company d/b/a The Ortho Group; the Oregon Rely 280 and Texas Kontos special-local-need registrations OR-200001 and TX-220003; Table 2: lambda-cyhalothrin technical, reg 85678-78, domestic indoor and outdoor uses terminated); of the FIFRA 6(f) voluntary mechanism and the February 19, 2026 notice of receipt (91 F R 7979) with its four comments; of the existing-stocks provisions quoted verbatim, including the August 6, 2027 registrant deadline, the February 7, 2028 amended-label deadline, and the supplies-exhausted rule for everyone else. The three-clocks framing and the count of 13 cancellations plus 3 amendments are mine, from the order’s tables. No trade press supplied any fact in this edition.
Thursday the EPA cancelled thirteen pesticide registrations, and I want to walk through it carefully, because the word "cancelled" does dishonest work in headlines. On the list: all three strengths of Hortus's Rhizopon AA rooting powder — the yellow tin that's been beside propagation benches for fifty years — plus Sipcam's Torrent G lambda-cyhalothrin granule, an Ortho-line herbicide, and a technical-grade lambda-cyhalothrin losing its domestic indoor and outdoor uses. Nothing on the list failed a test. These are voluntary cancellations — the registrants asked, EPA published the request in February, and of the four public comments, three agreed and one was about a chemical that isn't even on the list. This is how most products die now: not banned, just no longer worth the cost of keeping registered. What matters operationally is the existing-stocks clock, and it's really three clocks. The registrant can sell what's already packaged until August 6, 2027. Distributors can sell what they hold until it runs out. And growers can legally use what's in the shed until the last tin is empty, under the old label. Nothing stops this week — but every unit of Rhizopon powder that exists today is every unit that will ever exist. One trap worth flagging: two names on the list — Kontos and Rely 280 — are STATE registrations only (a Texas and an Oregon special-local-need). The federal Kontos registration is untouched. If you read a "Kontos cancelled" headline this week, check the registration number on your actual label against the order. The small number, not the brand name, is what got cancelled. If a cancelled product anchors your propagation program: count your stock, decide deliberately between stockpiling within shelf life and transitioning, and tell your customers the real story before a scarier version reaches them first.
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FIRST SOURCE · one verified original-source finding, composed for one reader · this edition: landscaping & horticulture — written for the people whose customers will read 'cancelled' and hear 'banned'