wheat

Biostimulants are increasingly available and are now widely marketed to farmers. While the jury is still out on a definitive definition, most definitions of biostimulants explain that they should stimulate plant nutrition processes independently of the product’s nutrient content with the aim of improving one or more of the following characteristics: nutrient efficiency, tolerance to abiotic stress, and/or quality.

Biostimulant products can contain individual product types or mixtures of product types, and these can be both microbial and/or non-microbial. Examples of microbial biostimulants include plant growth promoting bacteria and rhizobacteria (PGPB), non-pathogenic fungi, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). Non-microbial biostimulants can include seaweed extracts, humic substances and fulvic acids protein hydrolysates, amino acids and synthetic biostimulants (AHDB Research Review No. 89). But this list is not exhaustive, there are a lot of different products out there.  

The biostimulant market is growing rapidly however more independent research is needed to test product efficacy, with variable results often seen depending on the conditions or products and crops under test. In the UK, more in field experimentation is needed to find the most appropriate dosage, timings and management for UK crops. Biostimulant product claims include improving stress tolerance and nutrient uptake, but the economics and in field relevance is yet to be proven under UK conditions.   

ADAS has recently been funded by DEFRA to review biostimulants efficacy as part of Project 31280 and these results will be shared when available.   

What is your experience with biostimulants? Have you tested them? Do you have data to share? Please add comments below to start the discussion.  

 

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Topic Comments

Discussion

16/02/2023 - 15:22

Microbial 'Biologicals' can include:

  1. Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria
  2. Phosphorus solubilising bacteria
  3. Mycorrhizal fungi

Other biological substances include

  • Enzymes / phosphatases that make nutrients more available
  • Humic & Fulvic acids - make nutrients more available by chelating cations, supply micronutrients and stimulate root zones
  • Marine or protein extracts
  • Sugars - provide energy source for microbes, or signalling impact in plants for growth promotion or stress reduction.

Good discussion in this LinkedIn post:

 

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Farmer Innovation Group as part of the YEN Yield Testing EIP Agri project Amino acids have been widely reported in the farming press and in a few scientific papers to be biostimulants, but with little or no independent evidence from UK field conditions. This Amino Acid FIG was established to put that right, making eight tests in 2018 and five more in 2019.

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Enviresearch exists to provide the best regulatory and risk assessment service in Europe for the global chemical industry.

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The attention placed on soil health in agriculture has been receiving more and more attention in recent years primarily due to our improved understanding of the interactions between soil health and overall crop performance in both arable and horticultural systems. This has led to increased soil monitoring and analysis as well as the adoption of alternative farming methods such as cover-cropping and min-till plowing to improve overall soil longevity. However, this increased adoption of more sustainable practices is heavily restricted to organic systems as conventional farming continues to be heavily reliant on high-input chemical fertilizers. Thus the presence of native Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, (AMF) has been steadily decreasing in soils for decades which has only increased our reliance on these high-input chemical systems, further locking us into a business-as-usual model going forwards. As yield loss from pest pressure and disease susceptibility continue to threaten global food security, costing an estimated $300 billion a year, the race to find the best long-term solutions that pragmatically improve whole system resilience to biotic and abiotic factors is in our midst. Could AMF be part of the solution going, forwards? Here is what we know so far and some recent breakthroughs in the science surrounding it.  

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