Fungicidal compounds are actives broadly used for crop safety from fungal an infection, however they’ll additionally kill helpful organisms, enter the meals chain and promote resistance. Right here we report the primary discipline crop trial of homopolymer supplies that stop fungal attachment, exhibiting profitable crop safety by way of an actives-free strategy. Within the trial, formulations containing two candidate polymers have been utilized to younger wheat vegetation that have been topic to pure an infection with the wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici. A formulation containing one of many candidate polymers, poly(di(ethylene glycol) ethyl ether acrylate) abbreviated to DEGEEA, produced a major discount (26%) in an infection of the crop by Z. tritici, delivering safety towards fungal an infection that in contrast favourably with three totally different commercially established fungicide programmes examined in parallel. Moreover, the sprayed polymers didn’t negatively have an effect on wheat development. The 2 lead polymer candidates have been initially recognized bybio-performance testing utilizing in vitro microplate- and leaf-based assays and have been taken ahead efficiently right into a programme to optimize and scale-up their synthesis and compound them into a twig formulation. Subsequently, the optimistic discipline trial consequence has additionally established the validity of the smaller-scale, laboratory-based bioassay information and scale-up methodologies used. As a result of fungal attachment to plant surfaces is a primary step in lots of crop infections, this non-eluting polymer now presents important potential to ship actives-free safety towards fungal assault. A future focus needs to be to develop the fabric properties for this and different purposes together with different fungal pathogens.