After more than three three decades working for Syngenta and its legacy companies (Sandoz Agro and Novartis Agro), there have been many exciting personal highlights. In this talk, two of such will be discussed, namely the discovery of the corn herbicide bicyclopyrone, and the isolation, structure elucidation, synthesis, and use in crop protection of the host marking pheromone of the Mexican fruit fly Anastrepha ludens.