Plant biostimulants: Definition, concept, main categories and regulation

By P. Jardin. 2015

2,367 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A plant biostimulant is any substance or microorganism applied to plants with the aim to enhance nutrition efficiency, abiotic stress tolerance and/or crop quality traits, regardless of its nutrients content. By extension, plant biostimulants also designate commercial products containing mixtures of such substances and/or microorganisms. The definition proposed by this article is supported by arguments related to the scientific knowledge about the nature, modes of action and types of effects of biostimulants on crop and horticultural plants. Furthermore, the proposed definition aims at contributing to the acceptance of biostimulants by future regulations, especially in the EU, drawing the lines between biostimulants and fertilisers, pesticides or biocontrol agents. Many biostimulants improve nutrition and they do so regardless of their nutrients contents. Biofertilisers, which we propose as a subcategory of biostimulants, increase nutrient use efficiency and open new routes of nutrients acquisition by plants. In this sense, microbial biostimulants include mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal fungi, bacterial endosymbionts (like Rhizobium) and Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria. Thus, microorganisms applied to plants can have a dual function of biocontrol agent and of biostimulant, and the claimed agricultural effect will be instrumental in their regulatory categorization. The present review gives an overview of the definition and concept of plant biostimulants, as well as the main categories. This paper will also briefly describe the legal and regulatory status of biostimulants, with a focus on the EU and the US, and outlines the drivers, opportunities and challenges of their market development.

Subfields: Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/515670f7982105c728bd6adba6ff0cbd956a2eaf

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Citations in the corpus

Biostimulant properties of cyanobacterial hydrolysate related to polyamines (2017, background): “…agriculture and that the biostimulant effect is not related to nutrient supply to the plants but rather to the bioactivity of a range of molecules (du Jardin 2015), the effect of the hydrolysate was evaluated under high soil fertility that is characteristic of long-term organic soil management.”
Response of Mediterranean Ornamental Plants to Drought Stress (2019, background): “In recent years, there has been an increase in biostimulants used in agriculture and horticulture to enhance crop abiotic stress tolerance [128].”
Appraisal of Biodegradable Mulching Films and Vegetal-Derived Biostimulant Application as Eco-Sustainable Practices for Enhancing Lettuce Crop Performance and Nutritive Value (2020, background): “Moreover, it has been shown that vegetal-derived plant biostimulants effects involve the size modifications of roots by increasing the length and the number of root hairs, as well as the intake of both macroelements and microelements, leading to better crop performance and the nutritive value of the”
Foliar Applications of Protein Hydrolysate, Plant and Seaweed Extracts Increase Yield but Differentially Modulate Fruit Quality of Greenhouse Tomato (2017, background): “…in the use of plant biostimulants which include natural substances, other than fertilizers and pesticides, able to promote plant growth, yield, and to improve produce quality as well as resource use efficiency when applied to the crop in low quantities (Colla and Rouphael, 2015; du Jardin, 2015).”
Biostimulants in Plant Science: A Global Perspective (2017, methodology): “Du Jardin, 2015 Biostimulants “Are substances or materials, with the exception of nutrients and pesticides, which, when applied to plants, seeds, or growing substrates in specific formulations, have the capacity to modify physiological processes in plants in a way that provides potential benefits…”
Toward the molecular understanding of the action mechanism of Ascophyllum nodosum extracts on plants (2019, background): “However, the first report on “biogenic stimulators” that affect metabolic and energetic processes in humans, animals, and plants dates already from 1933 and since then the terminology and the meaning of this concept have evolved (du Jardin 2015; Yakhin et al. 2017).”