Agricultural uses of plant biostimulants

By Pamela Calvo, L. Nelson, J. Kloepper. Plant and Soil, 2014

2,044 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BackgroundPlant biostimulants are diverse substances and microorganisms used to enhance plant growth. The global market for biostimulants is projected to increase 12 % per year and reach over $2,200 million by 2018. Despite the growing use of biostimulants in agriculture, many in the scientific community consider biostimulants to be lacking peer-reviewed scientific evaluation.ScopeThis article describes the emerging definitions of biostimulants and reviews the literature on five categories of biostimulants: i. microbial inoculants, ii. humic acids, iii. fulvic acids, iv. protein hydrolysates and amino acids, and v. seaweed extracts.ConclusionsThe large number of publications cited for each category of biostimulants demonstrates that there is growing scientific evidence supporting the use of biostimulants as agricultural inputs on diverse plant species. The cited literature also reveals some commonalities in plant responses to different biostimulants, such as increased root growth, enhanced nutrient uptake, and stress tolerance.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d2bfca01f27526c542c74278da145141e89d7293

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Citations in the corpus

• Effect of Seaweed Extract on Productivity and Quality Attributes of Four Onion Cultivars (2020, background): “These growth hormones interact with the biochemical and physiological mechanisms of plants, thus improving crop productivity [14,15].”
• Plant biostimulants: physiological responses induced by protein hydrolyzed-based products and humic substances in plant metabolism (2016, background): “…defined as materials that contain one or more substances and/or microorganisms able to stimulate nutrient uptake and use efficiency by plants, increase plant tolerance to abiotic/biotic stress and improve crop quality when applied in small amounts (De Vasconcelos et al., 2009; Calvo et al., 2014).”
• Biostimulants Application in Horticultural Crops under Abiotic Stress Conditions (2019, background): “Since one of the main effects of biostimulants is to improve water use efficiency, their application could be a possible strategy to reduce the amount of water added to crops [184].”
• Microalgal Biostimulants and Biofertilisers in Crop Productions (2019, background): “Biostimulants are products that might show positive effects on crop yield by reducing abiotic stresses and restoring damage already caused by unfavourable environmental conditions [18,133].”
• Core microbiomes for sustainable agroecosystems (2018, background): “While an increasing number of studies are estimating microbial functions based on genome structure 70 and experimental inoculation of microbial strains to crop plants 12,15,19 , we need to make more effort to collect and curate those data systematically.”
• Role of Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria in Agricultural Sustainability—A Review (2016, background): “In this sense, PGPR may be used to enhance plant health and promote plant growth rate without environmental contamination [5].”
• Plant biostimulants: Definition, concept, main categories and regulation (2015, methodology): “Case by case, these compounds have been shown to play muliple roles as biostimulants of plant growth (Calvo et al., 2014; du ardin, 2012, Halpern et al., 2015).”
• Plant- and Seaweed-Based Extracts Increase Yield but Differentially Modulate Nutritional Quality of Greenhouse Spinach through Biostimulant Action (2018, background): “The highest protein content in PB-treated plants has been frequently associated with better N uptake and translocation [42].”