Biologicals Explained

Lorrie Boyer

Reporter

Matthew Pye, FMC Corporation Biological Subject Matter Explained what biologicals are in a visit with him during the Commodity Classic in Houston, Texas last week. Biological

can be a naturally occurring organism or substance.

“The big thing is it's not been modified from its original state so it's not been optimized or changed in any way.

He goes on to explain that there are three categories of biologicals. currently on

the market. There's over 1200 products that call themselves biologicals. And you can fit those into three categories. So bio-stimulants are the biggest one, but nine out of every 10 products is a biostimulant. And they have claims around abiotic stress and nutrient uptake. And then a subset of that is bio-fertilizers, which are really popular now. If you think about the traditional bio fertilizers would be your rhizobia your inoculants on roots, but we are playing in the space of bio pesticides. So those are things that have an EPA registration, that biofertilizers and bio-stimulants do not. They just go through the state level as a soil amendment.”I also noticed that most products that farmers use today are just modified biologicals, and a lot of the a lot of the products we use every day have some origin in nature. They've just been modified and that would no longer fit the category of the

biological.”

Once again, Matthew Pye, FMC Corporation Biological Subject Matter Expert speaking to me from the recent Commodity Classic event in Houston, Texas.