Biosupplie increases productivity and reduces production costs

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More and more rural producers are looking for sustainable technologies to combat plagues and diseases, in order to promote plant growth and increase productivity.

Despite the low natural fertility of most arable land in Brazil, the country’s agriculture continues to grow. Even with the economic crisis generated by COVID-19, which caused an estimated fall of up to 10% in Brazilian GDP in 2020, agricultural GDP is expected to grow by 2.4%, according to IPEA estimates.

This good performance is mainly due to the research carried out by institutions such as Embrapa, to the technologies applied to our production processes.

Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture instituted the National Program to promote the production and use of biosupplies. This technology favors a more sustainable agricultural production, using the resources that nature has developed in the course of its own evolution.

But do you know what biosupplie is? What are the main benefits of this sustainable technology? How do biosupplies increase productivity and reduce costs in your crops? Below you will find complete information on the subject. Check out!

Know what biosupplies is and how it was developed

Biosupplies is the plant, animal or microbial origin product or technology, used in the production, storage and processing of agricultural products. This input using purpose is to improve the animals, plants and microorganism’s growth, development and response mechanism.

Moreover, biosupplies allow to increase the soil nutrients absorption, thus favoring numerous plant species growth.

The biosupplies use is growing a lot in Brazil. The biological inputs market was responsible for trade R$ 675 million in 2019, according to data from CropLife Brasil.

Developed since the 1970s, biosupplie research currently involves more than 600 Embrapa researchers, located in almost all of its 43 centers. They work in research dedicated to biological control and the development of inoculants, responsible for promoting plant growth, such as nitrogen and phosphorus fixers in crops.

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Embrapa also has microbial germplasm banks designed to preserve and study these microorganisms. They isolate more than 10 thousand bacteria, fungi and viruses for biological control and insolates more than 14 thousand nitrogen fixers, nutrient solubilizers and growth promoters. This valuable asset can be used in the biosupplie production, several of which are already available on the market.

Furthermore, the boom in the biosupplie industry has also contributed to advances in research and has increased these biological products efficiency and safety guarantee. Today there are around 80 bio-factories operating in the country. The new biosupplies number grew from just 3 in 2011 to 106 in 2018.

See how biosupplies increases productivity

The main biosupplies are basically composed of microorganisms, such as viruses, bacteria and fungi. But there are also biosupplies based on macro-organisms, such as beneficial insects, predators, parasitoids, predatory mites, as well as semiochemicals (pheromones) and biochemicals.

All these biosupplies contributing to a more dynamic, efficient and productive agricultural production. They are important allies to help in production systems and reduce chemical inputs use. After all, improper or excessive synthetic products use can lead to environmental imbalances and increase dependence on imported pesticides and fertilizers.

Several biological inputs are already widely used by organic agriculture in Brazil. What most economically impacts Brazilian agriculture is the Bradyrhizobium genus inoculant based on nitrogen-fixing bacteria genus in soybeans. This biosupplie capture atmospheric nitrogen and transforming it into ammoniacal nitrogen, which is the form that plants absorb it.

This inoculant cost is very low compared to the benefits it brings. Its use results in annual billions of dollars savings in the approximately 38 million hectares cultivated with soybeans in Brazil.

Recently, inoculants based on Azospirillum, a plant growth-promoting bacterium, have also started to gain importance in soybean cultivation. They are used in the simultaneous inoculation with Bradyrhizobium, a process called co-inoculation, capable of increasing productivity.

Azospirillum also benefits from being co-inoculated with Rhizobium on beans or inoculated only on grasses such as corn, wheat, rice, and grasses.

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Discover the National Biosupplie Program app

Farmers can now check a product list suitable for nutrition, plagues and disease control of various agricultural crops by cell phone. The Biosupplies application, launched by the Ministry of Agriculture, is  available for free download on all operating systems.

In it you can find a catalog with 580 biological products available in the country designed to combat more than 100 invasive plagues and plants.

As we have seen, the biosupplie increases productivity and reduces costs in agribusiness, besides to reducing dependence on imported chemical inputs and pesticides.

Did you like this article? Did you understand what are the biosupplies benefits? Do you want to know more about the innovations that promise to revolutionize agribusiness? Click here.