Commercialization of microbes: Manufacturing, inoculation, best practice for objective field testing, and registration

Abstract

Commercialization of plant growth stimulating and biocontrol microbes plays a significant role in providing environmentally friendly and efficient alternatives for chemicals used in agriculture and horticulture. This chapter describes principles of the manufacturing process, including mass production and formulation, of microbes and specifies existing inoculation techniques. Moreover, since evaluation of the efficacy of products is essential for estimation of their commercial potential and because it is also required for their registration, rules and approaches used for the official efficacy tests based mostly on guidelines of the European Plant Protection Organization are included. In order to be placed on the market, microbiological plant protection products and biostimulants/biofertilizers have to be registered. Therefore, also requirements for registration of microbial products in different countries are described and discussed.