Biostimulants in Plant Science: A Global Perspective

By O. I. Yakhin, A. A. Lubyanov, I. A. Yakhin, P. Brown. Frontiers in Plant Science, 2017

1,188 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This review presents a comprehensive and systematic study of the field of plant biostimulants and considers the fundamental and innovative principles underlying this technology. The elucidation of the biological basis of biostimulant function is a prerequisite for the development of science-based biostimulant industry and sound regulations governing these compounds. The task of defining the biological basis of biostimulants as a class of compounds, however, is made more complex by the diverse sources of biostimulants present in the market, which include bacteria, fungi, seaweeds, higher plants, animals and humate-containing raw materials, and the wide diversity of industrial processes utilized in their preparation. To distinguish biostimulants from the existing legislative product categories we propose the following definition of a biostimulant as “a formulated product of biological origin that improves plant productivity as a consequence of the novel or emergent properties of the complex of constituents, and not as a sole consequence of the presence of known essential plant nutrients, plant growth regulators, or plant protective compounds.” The definition provided here is important as it emphasizes the principle that biological function can be positively modulated through application of molecules, or mixtures of molecules, for which an explicit mode of action has not been defined. Given the difficulty in determining a “mode of action” for a biostimulant, and recognizing the need for the market in biostimulants to attain legitimacy, we suggest that the focus of biostimulant research and validation should be upon proof of efficacy and safety and the determination of a broad mechanism of action, without a requirement for the determination of a specific mode of action. While there is a clear commercial imperative to rationalize biostimulants as a discrete class of products, there is also a compelling biological case for the science-based development of, and experimentation with biostimulants in the expectation that this may lead to the identification of novel biological molecules and phenomenon, pathways and processes, that would not have been discovered if the category of biostimulants did not exist, or was not considered legitimate.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9323dc35f5d1b11e70842f77b450f5977da562d0

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

A. Jamiołkowska

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Response of Mediterranean Ornamental Plants to Drought Stress (2019, background): “Alleviation of abiotic stress is perhaps the most frequently cited benefit of biostimulant formulations [129].”
A Biostimulant Based on Seaweed (Ascophyllum nodosum and Laminaria digitata) and Yeast Extracts Mitigates Water Stress Effects on Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) (2021, background): “Because of their complex composition, understanding their mechanisms of action is a hard challenge, but several scientific evidences demonstrated that these products are able to help plants to cope with adverse environmental conditions [12].”
Natural Compounds as Elicitors of Plant Resistance Against Diseases and New Biocontrol Strategies (2020, background): “In addition, many of them not only mitigate stress-induced limitations and regulate/modify physiological processes in plants to stimulate growth and increase productivity, but also directly limit the development of phytopathogens [30,73].”
Exogenous Application of Amino Acids Improves the Growth and Yield of Lettuce by Enhancing Photosynthetic Assimilation and Nutrient Availability (2019, background): “In plants, L-methionine biosynthesis plays a central role in fixing inorganic sulfur from the environment, providing the only metabolic sulfide donor for the generation of glutathione, phytochelatins, iron–sulfur clusters, vitamin cofactors, and multiple secondary metabolites [42,43].”
Plant Biostimulants: A Categorical Review, Their Implications for Row Crop Production, and Relation to Soil Health Indicators (2021, background): “[14] report that synergy among constituents within a product makes it difficult to ascertain the exact mechanisms responsible for inducing a crop response and, as such, a better approach for describing biostimulant action should be based on the efficacy in their application.”
Biostimulants Application in Horticultural Crops under Abiotic Stress Conditions (2019, background): “In many countries outside the European Union, both kinds of information must be reported on the label in order to register these products [55].”
Bacterial Plant Biostimulants: A Sustainable Way towards Improving Growth, Productivity, and Health of Crops (2021, methodology): “includes the creation of novel plant biostimulants and successful methods for their application [11-15].”
Biological control and integrated pest management in organic and conventional systems (2020, background): “Additionally, biostimulants are biological products some of which can reduce the impact of pest activity as a consequence of a complex of constituents or indirect mode of action that improves plant tolerance to abiotic stresses, and not as a result of the sole presence of a known plant protective co”
Microbial Consortia versus Single-Strain Inoculants: An Advantage in PGPM-Assisted Tomato Production? (2019, background): “, from plant, seaweed, and compost extracts or plant and animal based protein hydrolysates with plant growth-promoting and strengthening potential but without significant input of nutrients, has a long history [1,2].”