Key words of the passage: biostimulants; EU; regulation

In the EU, the last months have seen significant changes in regard to the current as well as the future regulations for biopesticides and biostimulants. One of the key issues of course is the step from national biostimulant regulations to EU harmonised rules under a fertiliser framework. Entry into force of the new EU fertiliser Regulation 2019/1009 has brought on several changes. For one, the new regulation will significantly simplify market entry for biostimulant products from its applicability in 2022 onwards, provided that they are compliant to the new regulation, as there will be harmonised rules and procedures applicable for all EU Member States.

However, by including biostimulant products and explicitly excluding them from EU plant protection products Regulation 1107/2009, the new fertiliser regulation not only closes a regulatory gap through bringing biostimulants under harmonised rules from June 2022 onwards, but opens up another one. This is mainly due to the fact that the official definition of biostimulants, eligible for registration under the EU framework in future, is mainly a legal and regulatory, not a scientific one.

According to Regulation 2019/1009 biostimulants are defined as products ‘stimulating plant nutrition processes independently of the product’s nutrient content with the sole aim of improving one or more of the following characteristics of the plant or the plant rhizosphere: (a) nutrient use efficiency, (b) tolerance to abiotic stress, (c) quality traits, [or] d) availability of confined nutrients in soil or rhizosphere’.

  Source: AgoPages