Skip to main content

Olmix group releases methodological article on frontiers in plant science

By June 3, 2019January 15th, 2024Plant Care
Reading Time: 2 minutes

The text highlights General Principles to Justify Plant Biostimulant Claims according to the forthcoming European Union Fertilizing Products Regulation.

In cooperation with members of the European Biostimulants Industry Council (EBIC), Olmix Group has recently released a methodological article on ‘Frontiers in Plant Science’, which provides with a framework to evaluate objectively the claims of biostimulants and makes a particular and clear distinction of fertilizers and biocontrol products.

Text has been published following the new European Union Fertilizing Products Regulation, to be effective in 2022. This new law will be including a clear definition of biostimulants, which is almost identical to the one suggested by the EBIC

What does this new regulation say?

  • The new law stipulates that ‘plant biostimulant’ means “a product stimulating plant nutrition processes independently of the product’s nutrient content, with the aim of improving one or more of the following characteristics of the plant: nutrient use efficiency, tolerance to abiotic stress, crop quality traits or availability of confined nutrients in the soil and rhizosphere”.
  • The future regulation also specifies that a plant biostimulant “shall have the effects that are claimed on the label for the plants specified thereon.” This creates an onus for manufacturers to demonstrate to regulators and customers that product claims are justified.

The new European Union Fertilizing Products Regulation will be effective in 2022.

What does this article say?

It is clear that the justification of the agronomic claim of a given plant biostimulant will be an important element to allow it to be placed on the EU market once this new European regulation is applied.

In this article, members of the European Biostimulant Industry Council (EBIC) propose some general guiding principles to follow when justifying plant biostimulant claims. These principles are expected to be incorporated into harmonized European standards that are being developed by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) to support the implementation of the regulation.

read the full text