Russian biostimulant industry watch: from research, field practice points of view

The first discussion of the “biogenic stimulant” theory can be first attributed in 1933 to Prof. V.P. Filatov, who proposed that biological materials derived from various organisms exposed to stressors, including plants, could affect metabolic and energetic processes in humans, animals and other plants. To a wide extent, Russia is a region with a vast territory and various climate conditions. Therefore, it is rich in mineral and biological resources and can benefit from the acquisition of raw materials and further research on biostimulants. To understand the Russian biostimulants industry from the research and field practice points of view, AgroPages interviewed representatives of two biostimulants companies, LignoHumate and Sibbiopharm.

Could you please introduce your company? 

Kokhan: Lignohumate is a company involved in manufacturing and selling concentrated plant growth stimulators and animal feed additives. Our products’ core feature is the combination of humic and fulvic acids derived from lignosulfonate, a liquid fraction of wood. We have been present in the Russian and global markets for more than 25 years, and we are currently cultivating more than 1 million hectares worldwide. 

Nizhegorodov: Sibbiopharm is a modern Russian biotechnological company involved in the large-scale production of microbiological products, which are used in healthcare, poultry farming, forest and plant protection, crop farming and other areas. In December 2012, Sibbiopharm received a certificate from the international certification body, TÜV NORD CERT (Germany), according to the quality management system, ISO 9001: 2015. Currently, our products are exported to India, Kenya, Thailand and eight other countries. 

Could you briefly introduce the history and current development status of your products? 

Kokhan: The history of humic acids, and more precisely, the salts of humic acids, began in the 20th century, when it was discovered that natural humus in the soil containing humic substances mixed with water significantly affect the development of plants. After years of research, people have found a way to extract humic substances from raw materials, such as coal or peat, by mixing with alkali. Currently, 90% of all humic products in the world are made from coal, as this raw material contains the highest amounts of humic substances compared to other non-renewable raw materials. The development status of this category of products is based on mixing humates with other stimulating components, such as amino acids and mineral compounds. 

The uses of humates are varied and include plant cultivation, animal husbandry, decontamination of polluted soils, pharmacy, biological food additives and cosmetics. The latter are popular, because humic acids have a pronounced stimulating effect on every living cell, not just plant cells. 

Nizhegorodov: Sibbiopharm produces a product based on gibberellic acids, Gibbersib, and the nitrogen fixer, Azofit. 

Gibberellins are a group of phytohormones of diterpene nature, which perform various functions in plants related to controlling hypocotyl elongation, seed germination and flowering. In the control of most morphogenetic processes, gibberellins act in the same way as auxins and are antagonists of cytokinins and abscisic acid (ABA). Gibberellins were discovered by the Japanese scientist, E. Kurosawa (1926), while studying the rice disease, overgrowth, caused by the fungus, Gibberella fujikuroi Sow, which affects rice crops and causes a specific disease causing plants to have abnormally elongated internodes and low seed production. In 1935, the Japanese scientist, T. Yabuta, isolated gibberellins from this mushroom in crystalline form and gave them their current name. 

Another biostimulant produced by Sibbiopharm is Azofit. Nitrogen fixation plays an important role in the nitrogen cycle in nature, and is the most important source of nitrogen. Members of the genus, Azotobacter, play a key role in the soil nitrogen cycle, by fixing molecular nitrogen. Also, representatives of this genus synthesize some biologically active substances, including some phytohormones, such as auxins, thereby, stimulating the growth and development of plants, being a biological stimulator, as well as synthesizing the factors necessary for plant growth. Exopolysaccharides promote the mobilization of heavy metals in the soil, contributing to the self-purification of soils contaminated with heavy metals, such as cadmium, mercury and lead. The first representative of the genus, Azotobacter chroococcum, was discovered and described in 1901 by the Dutch microbiologist and botanist, Martin Beijerinck. 

What is your view on biostimulants? What are the advantages gained by local Russian companies developing biostimulants, as well as any challenges? 

Kokhan: Our view regarding biostimulants is positive if we are talking about them in the context of increasing plant yields. By using various mechanisms, they can work really well in collaboration, and the advantages of Russian producers of biostimulants certainly lies in the amount of active trial work done on many biostimulants in precise proportions to get the best result, such as Lignohumate combined with algae. 

The main advantages of Lignohumate compared over other Russian and international companies lie in its unique manufacturing process and the raw material, lignosulfonate, which no one else uses and results in the highest actives substance concentrations in the market. Also, the final product contains a teo-component mixture of humic and fulvic acids, while coal, peat and leonardite humates containing only a humic fraction of fulvic molecules are mostly all washed away from the raw materials over the time, spanning hundreds of years, during which humic substances are formed in nature. Finally, our product is fully soluble unlike other humates, which almost always contain ballast particles. Recently, the manufacturers of natural humates began to invest in complicated filter systems to remove ballast. However, such an investment results in a significant and often unbearable product price increase. 

Nizhegorodov: In general, the Russian plant protection product market in 2019 rose by 28%, due to an increase in acreage and higher agricultural production. The fastest growing segment of the plant protection market is the biopesticides sector, in which farmers are showing increasing interest, and almost all large manufacturers offer this product in their portfolios. This year, 945.37 tons of biopesticides and 5658.32 million pieces of entomophages were produced in the Russian Federation. 

Five or six years ago, few people have heard of biostimulants, but today, this market is one of the fastest growing agricultural sectors, growing 12% to 15% per year. Plant biostimulants are derived from various natural substances that activate natural biological processes, enabling crops to cope with stress and achieve their maximum genetic potential in terms of yield and quality. 

At present, biotechnology has rapidly moved to the forefront of scientific and technological progress, due to some of its features, which are: 

- Biotechnological production is a science-intensive production, meaning that its development entails a significant increase in economic efficiency. 

- In biotechnology, it is difficult to distinguish between fundamental research, on the one hand, and applied research, on the other, highlighted by the fact that in biotechnology, there is practically no time gap between obtaining a fundamental result and developing technologies for practical development. 

- Technologies based on the use of cells and biological molecules offer considerable opportunities for the use of natural diversity, and the results of fundamental biotechnological research have relatively good programmability and potential practical importance. 

- Biotechnology offers the possibility of replacing non-renewable resources with renewable ones. Therefore, it is considered a means of solving the issues associated with the shortage of non-renewable natural resources. 

What is the common standard used in your territory to estimate the quality or results of a product? 

Kokhan: The final products of all humates are measured through several different parameters, which are moisture content, solid fraction content, ash content, water solution pH, fulvic and humic acid content, and content of metals. For measuring the content of humic and fulvic acids, Lignohumate uses a different technology from the one used in humates extracted from coal and peat, because of its high solubility and different humification level. The specifics of this method are very technical, but it is important to note that our product needs to be measured differently. 

Nizhegorodov: The biological and economic efficiency of a product are the main indicators that decisions are based on, in terms of their competitiveness and feasibility for introduction. These indicators do not always correlate with each other. Sometimes, a product that has a lower biological effectiveness compared to the standard can have other positive effects on plants and generate higher economic efficiency. Another example is a product that has high economic efficiency but is not economically profitable due to its high cost. Therefore, when conducting demonstration production tests, it is necessary to study and consider all indicators.

Biological effectiveness (BE) is a decrease in the intensity of development of harmful biological objects, such as diseases, pests and weeds, or the degree of damage to protected plants resulting from the use of plant protection agents. 

Biological effectiveness can be expressed by various indicators, such as the removal of the harmful stages of insect development by bioinsecticides, a decrease in the number or density, a decrease in the spread of diseases due to fungicides and seed dressers, and a decrease in plant damage due to insecticides, fungicides and seed dressers. This indicator is often expressed as a percentage of the indicators of the control variant in which these products were not used or as the indicators of the reference variant, in which well-known and widespread products with similar spectrums of action and compositions were used. 

Economic efficiency is characterized by two indicators, which are the value of the additional saved yield or yield increase in t/ha, as well as the actual economic efficiency, which is the ratio of the yield in the tested or reference variant in relation to the yield of the control. Economic efficiency is also determined by the ratio of the cost of the additional or saved yield while considering quality, as well as the cost of protective measures. Its main indicators are net income and profitability. 

The objectivity of a new product assessment largely depends on the accounting correctness of additional costs. Plant protection costs include the cost of the product, wages, the depreciation of fixed assets, the cost of routine repairs and maintenance of machines, the cost of fuel and lubricants, and the cost of harvesting, transportation and finalization of the stored crop. Wage costs are those paid to tractor drivers for spraying crops and transporting solutions or water, as well as to workers involved in preparing the solution, loading and unloading the product, along with those for accounting. The costs of depreciation, repairs and maintenance are determined for all types of fixed assets involved in the technological process of plant protection, such as tractors, agricultural machines and sprayers. 

Based on the analysis of the above indicators, a conclusion about the effectiveness of using the product and/or proposals related to its use can be made. 

When evaluating plant protection measures in a separate experiment, the results are valid for a strictly determined situation, such as the type of soil in a particular field, weather conditions, crop variety and number of pests. When conditions change, the level of biological and economic performance indicators will change. Therefore, the final decision on the feasibility of using this product in production should be made after two to three years of testing at several areas, such as farms, which differ in terms of agro-ecological and economic-ecological conditions. 

How are the policy attitudes towards biostimulants? 

Kokhan: The policy attitudes towards humic products are variable in different regions. However, they are mostly friendly, as the danger posed by humic products to plants, animals and humans being is graded as level 4, which is the lowest. The only concern in terms of policy is the presence of poor quality and ineffective products in the market, along with fake products, but this can happen with every type of agrochemical. Regarding registration in Russia, it takes two years to register a product and a lot of paperwork must be filed at the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. However, it is often worth it considering how big Russia is, how much land is cultivated and how many agricultural holdings are present in the country, specifically in Southern Russia in Krasnodar Kray, Stavropol' Kray and Rostov Oblast'. Other countries are also different in terms of their registration and certification process, so it is hard to sum it all up. If we are talking about some special ways to get the product certified, the European Union has a system called “E-fertilizers,” which we are happily a part of. The system allows members to release a registered agrochemical product in all EU countries without having to register it in every country. Latin America also has the Andean Union, which enables members to do the same. 

Nizhegorodov: The share of the biological method in Russia is no more than 3%, as many people, due to lack of experience in using biological products, use conservative methods of protection, such as chemicals. Recently, the entire world, including in Russia, has increasingly focused on the issues related to utilizing microbiology in agriculture. We managed to significantly expand and deepen our understanding of the role of microorganisms in plant life and formulate priority practical tasks to reduce the use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers, as well as replace pesticides with microbiological preparations, protect plants from stress created by soil pollution caused by heavy metals and radionuclides. Every year, new biological products appear on the market with practically the same, often unfair and most importantly illiterate advertising. Sometimes, they promise to increase yield, quality and germination levels while offering the possibility of replacing one bottle of organic and mineral fertilizers, as well as not using chemical plant protection products. The "ecological cleanliness" of a biological product is often prioritized, but this, in reality, requires special assessment. It is worth noting the growing problem of using cheap, unsafe, counterfeit and unregistered microbiological biopesticides. Unfortunately, such business and PR moves, for obvious reasons, have become a significant barrier to the introduction of truly effective modern microbiological biopesticides. 

The microbiological pesticides registration procedure in Russia is a rather long and multi-stage process that takes about three to four years. Biologicals must undergo toxicological examination on mammals, fish and bees. Then they are tested for biological effectiveness in three climatic zones over two years. Environmental and sanitary-hygienic research on biological products aimed at determining their effects on the environment and humans must also be conducted.

This interview was originally published in the magazine 2021 Biologicals Special. 

Click the picture below to download the magazine and find more reports on biopesticides, biostimulants and biofertilizers.