US Biofertilizer Market: new report

Biofertilizers are defined as substances comprising living microbes, which when applied to seed, plant, and soil stimulate growth by the supply of essential nutrients, such as N, P, and other mineral nutrients. Moreover, inoculants that provide nutrients to the plants are also considered as biofertilizers. The US biofertilizers market is segmented by microorganisms into rhizobium, azotobacter, azospirillum, blue-green algae, phosphate solubilizing bacteria, mycorrhiza, and other microorganisms.

The total consumption of rhizobium biofertilizer in the US was 87 842.1 t in 2017. These inoculants are the best known and most exploited for their symbiotic nitrogen-fixing ability. The popular genera used are bradyrhizobium, sinorhizobium, azorhizobium, mesorhizobium, and allorhizobium. They are distributed all across North America. As of 2014, the majority of bio fertilizers used were rhizobium-based, which constituted a major portion of the US market demand.

Conventional farming practices were being extensively carried out in agriculture, which made use of synthetic fertilizers for providing essential plant nutrients to the soil. An overuse of these fertilizers destroyed the soil, by rescinding the soil of its essential nutrients and thereby causing degradation of the soil. As a result, in order to improve the quality of soil, there is the need to make use of an alternative method, such as using biofertilizers, which can help in improving the quality of the soil, without depriving it of the essential nutrients. Using biofertilizers also helps in scaling up the nutrient intake of plants, which is also essential to the current scenario. Biofertilizers are utilized for rice, pulses, millets, cotton, sugarcane, and other horticulture crops. Since biofertilizers are capable of boosting the soil organic matter, it is considered to be one of the most important components of soil management, in the current paradigm.

Biofertilizers constitute fungi, bacteria, protozoa, and many other living microorganisms. Since biofertilizers are often stored under non-ideal conditions (e.g., high temperature, light exposure), they have lower shelf life, and this results in lower efficacy. The microorganisms should either be robust, or should have greater capacity to survive in high numbers under harsh conditions, if efficacy has to be increased. Some biofertilizers are crop-specific and location-specific and hence, their efficacy does not stay the same at diverse locations, due to variances in agro-climatic conditions and soil-edaphic factors. Carrier-enriched biofertilizers make use of peat, coal, clays, lignite, inorganic soil, etc. The shelf-life of such biofertilizers is limited to 6 – 12 months in powder form.

Companies mentioned:

- Abhinav Biotech
- Agrinos AS
- Agro Solutions Gmbh & Co
- Bioworks Inc.
- Camson Biotechnologies Limited
- Kiwa Bio-Tech Products Group Corporation
- Lallemand Inc.
- Symborg SL

Read the article online at: https://www.worldfertilizer.com/special-reports/22112018/us-biofertilizer-market-new-report/