https://agrospectrumasia.com/rssfeed/r-and-d/field%20trial field trial https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4710/longping-high-tech-rice-variety-sets-new-super-rice-yield-record-at-18-47-tonnes-per-hectare.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4710/longping-high-tech-rice-variety-sets-new-super-rice-yield-record-at-18-47-tonnes-per-hectare.html Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:01:17 +0530 A rice variety designed to fight one of the crop’s most persistent insect threats has simultaneously set a new benchmark for super-rice yields in China. Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Hunan Province conducted on-site yield acceptance monitoring at a 100-mu demonstration plot of Weiliangyou 5287, a planthopper-resistant hybrid rice variety developed by Yuan Longping High-Tech Agriculture Co., Ltd. The plot recorded an average dried-grain yield of 18,474 kg/ha, equivalent to about 18.47 tonnes per hectare, establishing a new high-yield record in super-rice acceptance monitoring, according to the company. The result is significant not simply because of the headline yield. Weiliangyou 5287 has been developed around a breeding strategy that attempts to bring together high productivity and biological pest resistance, potentially reducing the dependence on chemical control in rice production. The hybrid rice variety was bred by the team led by Yang Yuanzhu, chief scientist at Longping High-Tech, and incorporates the Bph30 gene, which confers high resistance to brown planthopper, alongside broad-spectrum genes associated with resistance to rice blast. The variety is also positioned for premium grain quality and improved nitrogen-use efficiency. The underlying resistance mechanism is genetic rather than pesticide-based. The Bph30 gene strengthens the cell walls of sclerenchyma tissue in rice plants, making it more difficult for brown planthoppers to penetrate plant tissues with their stylets. By restricting the pest’s ability to feed, the resistance can also reduce its reproductive capacity, providing a biological route to suppressing planthopper populations. That trait becomes particularly relevant in seasons when pest pressure and weather conditions combine to threaten yield. Longping High-Tech said the 2026 achievement came despite low temperatures and inadequate sunlight, while rice planthopper pressure was particularly severe. Conventional crop protection can suppress pest populations, but repeated chemical intervention also raises production costs and creates concerns around resistance, residues and environmental impacts. Genetic resistance, when sufficiently durable, offers an additional layer of crop protection embedded directly into the variety. Longping High-Tech has been working on planthopper-resistant rice breeding since 2006. The company has collaborated with research groups, including Professor He Guangcun’s team at Wuhan University, to develop a molecular design breeding system focused on brown planthopper resistance. The programme has so far produced nearly 100 insect-resistant varieties, with 49 rice planthopper-resistant varieties either approved or submitted for approval, according to Longping High-Tech. The latest yield result therefore represents more than a single demonstration-plot achievement. It provides a field-level indication of what molecular breeding can deliver when pest resistance is integrated with the broader productivity architecture of hybrid rice. Shi Yonggan, general manager of Hunan Yahua Seeds Co., Ltd., a core subsidiary of Longping High-Tech, said the yield acceptance result represents a major breakthrough in the company's collaborative research on rice insect-resistant breeding and super-high yield. The bigger question now is whether such performance can be translated from high-performing demonstration plots into consistent commercial yields across diverse production environments. For rice-growing regions facing rising pest pressure, climate variability and growing scrutiny of input use, varieties that can combine yield, genetic pest resistance, disease resistance and nutrient-use efficiency are likely to remain an important direction for breeding programmes. Weiliangyou 5287’s 18.47-tonne-per-hectare result puts that breeding proposition into unusually sharp focus: the next generation of rice improvement may increasingly be judged not by yield alone, but by how efficiently a variety protects and produces that yield under field-level stress. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4589/chinas-new-peanut-variety-posts-50-yield-gain-in-dabie-mountains.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4589/chinas-new-peanut-variety-posts-50-yield-gain-in-dabie-mountains.html Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:25:02 +0530 A new peanut variety developed by China’s Oil Crops Research Institute (OCRI) has demonstrated a significant yield advantage in one of the country’s most challenging peanut-growing regions, highlighting the potential of disease-resistant breeding and integrated crop management to improve productivity in marginal agricultural areas. During an on-site yield assessment in August, experts from the Agricultural Development Center of Macheng City, Hubei Province, evaluated Zhonghua 29 at a demonstration base in Songbu Town. The variety recorded an average yield of 387.9 kg per mu, 50.35 per cent higher than locally grown conventional varieties, setting a new yield benchmark for peanuts in the hilly and mountainous areas of the Yangtze River basin. The result is particularly significant for the Dabie Mountains, where peanut production faces a combination of poor soils, sloping farmland and high incidence of bacterial wilt. Field mortality among susceptible varieties can exceed 70 per cent, while conventional resistant varieties typically produce only around 260 kg per mu. Zhonghua 29 was developed specifically for peanut-growing areas affected by bacterial wilt. According to OCRI, the variety has a bacterial wilt incidence of below 5 per cent, alongside high oleic acid content of up to 79.9 per cent and protein content of up to 29.5 per cent. Its agronomic profile also includes tolerance to drought and waterlogging, making it suitable for the dryland and variable-weather conditions found across parts of the Yangtze River basin. These characteristics are particularly relevant as growers in hilly regions contend with increasingly uneven rainfall and disease pressure. OCRI has been working on peanut varieties suited to bacterial-wilt-affected areas of the Dabie Mountains since the 1970s. Its breeding programme has produced four generations of disease-resistant varieties, including Xiekangqing, Zhonghua No. 4, Zhonghua 21 and Zhonghua 29. The latest field results suggest that the breeding effort is moving beyond disease resistance alone, combining yield potential, nutritional quality and resilience to environmental stress. The performance of Zhonghua 29 at the Macheng demonstration site was supported by OCRI's integrated green prevention and control system for peanut soil-borne diseases. Rather than relying on a single intervention, the approach combines ARC microbial agents, seed treatment, ridge cultivation and precision pesticide application during the middle and later stages of crop development. The integrated system has been promoted by China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs as a key agricultural technology for four consecutive years, from 2022 to 2025. Its deployment alongside Zhonghua 29 addresses two of the region's longstanding production constraints—high disease incidence and low yields. The combination of resistant genetics and targeted agronomic management could offer growers a more practical route to raising output without depending solely on increased chemical inputs. The Macheng results therefore carry implications beyond a single demonstration plot. For peanut-producing areas where disease, terrain and soil quality limit conventional varieties, the experience points to a broader model in which variety selection and crop-management technology work together to improve farm productivity. The 387.9 kg-per-mu yield achieved by Zhonghua 29 represents a substantial improvement over the roughly 260 kg-per-mu average associated with conventional resistant varieties in the region. More importantly, the result was achieved under the challenging production conditions characteristic of the Dabie Mountains rather than in a high-input, favourable growing environment.   ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4568/beijing-showcases-gm-short-stature-and-silage-corn-varieties.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4568/beijing-showcases-gm-short-stature-and-silage-corn-varieties.html Mon, 31 Aug 2026 11:11:00 +0530 Beijing’s seed industry is taking its newest corn varieties out of the laboratory and into the field. At the 2026 Beijing Corn New Superior Varieties and Specialty Crop Varieties Demonstration and Observation Event, held on August 25 at the Beijing Crop Variety Trial and Demonstration Base, breeding experts, extension workers, large growers and seed-company representatives gathered to assess how 160 varieties are performing under real growing conditions. The event was designed to provide something more practical than a catalogue of approved varieties. It gave growers and industry participants the opportunity to compare plant vigour, disease and lodging resistance, ear development, planting density and yield potential in one place. The objective, according to organisers, is to make variety selection more open, visual and evidence-led—allowing participants to “select varieties by observing crops” rather than relying only on trial data or marketing  The 160 entries were divided across four sections: 40 spring-sown common corn and silage-corn varieties; 30 new short-stature corn varieties; 50 genetically modified corn varieties; and 40 specialty-crop varieties, including upland rice, foxtail millet and sorghum. The display reflects the changing priorities of China’s seed sector. Yield remains central, but the industry is also placing greater emphasis on resistance, planting density, labour-saving traits, feed value, climate adaptability and crop quality. The 40 conventional and silage-corn varieties formed the largest production-oriented section. They included varieties developed by institutions such as China Agricultural University, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, alongside commercial seed companies including Beijing Lianchuang Seed Industry Co., Ltd., Zhongdi Seed Industry Co., Ltd. and Denong Seed Industry Co., Ltd. Among the newly approved varieties being planted for the first time at the base were Zhongyu 749, Dedan 239 and Meijia 658. Their field performance is being evaluated for adaptability and yield under Beijing conditions. The event also included varieties that have already been grown in Beijing for several years and have shown more stable performance. Jingnongke 828, Zhongnongda 678 and Yufeng 303 were displayed to assess how they perform under this year’s weather and field conditions. That distinction matters. Newly approved varieties may offer fresh genetic potential, but they still need to prove their value in commercial conditions. Established varieties may be less novel, but their yield stability and adaptability can provide growers with lower-risk planting choices. The short-stature corn section drew particular attention. Thirty varieties were displayed, all developed with lower plant height, appropriate ear placement, stronger stalks and more developed root systems than conventional corn. Shorter plants can offer a practical advantage in areas exposed to strong winds or heavy rain. By reducing plant height and improving stem strength, breeders are seeking to lower lodging risk—the collapse or bending of plants that can reduce yields and complicate mechanical harvesting. The plants were shown under a high-density planting condition of 5,500 plants per mu. That is equivalent to roughly 82,500 plants per hectare. According to the event briefing, the varieties maintained good ventilation and light penetration under dense planting. The breeding logic is straightforward. A more compact plant can shorten the internal distance nutrients travel and reduce the proportion of photosynthetic output used to maintain excess vegetative growth. More of the crop’s resources can then be directed towards ear development. This does not mean every short-stature variety will automatically out-yield taller corn. Performance will still depend on planting density, soil fertility, water availability, local climate, disease pressure and crop management. But the category is attracting attention because it may combine higher-density planting with stronger lodging resistance and improved suitability for mechanisation. The genetically modified corn section was another major feature of the demonstration. Fifty GM corn varieties were included, of which 23 had received approval, covering nine transformation events. The display was designed to evaluate yield, stability, resistance, stress tolerance and the effectiveness of the traits introduced through biological breeding.aixpoint Organisers said that compared with adjacent conventional control varieties, the GM corn plots showed intact leaves, cleaner plants and no visible insect damage or mould on the ears in the reported field observation. The varieties are designed to reduce damage caused by insect pests and can potentially reduce insecticide use where the traits perform as intended. Their glyphosate tolerance can also make weed management less labour-intensive. Beijing’s Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs had already recommended nine GM corn varieties in February 2026. The field demonstration expanded that representation and allowed participants to compare a wider group of products under the same conditions. The exhibition is part of China’s wider move towards the commercialisation of biological breeding. The technology is being evaluated not only for its yield potential but also for whether it can improve pest control, reduce labour requirements and make production more predictable. However, commercial adoption will depend on more than field performance. Seed pricing, stewardship, regulatory compliance, grower awareness, pest-resistance management and market acceptance will all influence the speed and scale of deployment. The final section focused on 40 specialty-crop varieties, including upland rice, foxtail millet and sorghum. The materials were introduced from major production areas in Hebei, Inner Mongolia and Shanxi. The aim was not solely staple-food production. The trials were also intended to identify varieties with market appeal and ornamental value that could support Beijing’s agricultural-tourism projects, leisure agriculture and landscape-farming initiatives. This reflects another dimension of the seed industry. Varieties can be chosen not only for yield or resilience, but also for appearance, local identity, processing potential, visitor appeal and suitability for higher-value niche markets. Niu Qian, Chief of the Variety Regional Trial Section at the Beijing Seed Management Station, said the event was intended to create an open, intuitive, objective, comparable, credible and usable platform for variety selection. The field display, Niu said, was designed to show the real performance of new varieties and accelerate the practical application of seed-industry innovation. That is the central commercial value of such demonstrations. Breeding innovation is not complete when a new variety is approved. It must perform across different growing conditions, meet growers’ economic needs and fit into local production systems. The Beijing trial base is increasingly becoming a bridge between these groups. By bringing breeders, seed companies, extension workers and farmers into the same field, it allows varieties to be tested not only for biological performance but also for practical suitability. The 2026 event shows how China’s seed sector is changing. Conventional high-yield corn remains important, but newer priorities are becoming visible: short-stature plants that can handle dense planting, GM varieties with insect-resistance and herbicide-tolerance traits, silage corn for livestock systems and specialty crops that can serve both agriculture and rural tourism. The immediate test is the field season. The longer-term test is whether these varieties can help growers manage weather risk, labour shortages, pest pressure and the demand for higher productivity. The event’s most important contribution may be its simplest one: putting the crop in front of the people who must ultimately decide whether to plant it. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4554/china-strengthens-national-crop-variety-trials-to-accelerate-climate-resilient-wheat-rapeseed-and-potato-breeding.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4554/china-strengthens-national-crop-variety-trials-to-accelerate-climate-resilient-wheat-rapeseed-and-potato-breeding.html Thu, 27 Aug 2026 18:32:22 +0530 China is sharpening its national crop variety evaluation system as it seeks to accelerate the development and adoption of higher-yielding, more resilient and better-quality crop varieties capable of performing under increasingly challenging production conditions. The National Agricultural Technology Extension and Service Center held a national review meeting for winter wheat, winter rapeseed and winter potato variety trials in Jinzhong City, Shanxi Province, from August 18 to 19, 2026. The meeting reviewed results from the 2025-2026 crop season, finalised arrangements for trials in 2026-2027 and outlined priorities for improving variety testing, evaluation and demonstration. The meeting comes against a backdrop of growing pressure on agricultural production from weather variability and other production risks. Last year's large-scale delay in autumn sowing created particularly difficult conditions for winter crops. Despite those challenges, the national trial system identified and accelerated the development and promotion of several new varieties with strong yield potential, stable performance, disease resistance and improved quality. The results were seen as evidence that varietal innovation can partly offset the effects of adverse planting conditions. By selecting varieties better suited to delayed sowing and difficult production environments, China's agricultural system was able to support improvements in summer grain yields and contribute to a strong harvest. The approach effectively demonstrated what officials described as compensating for delayed sowing through improved varieties. Rather than relying solely on changes in cultivation practices, the strategy places genetics and variety selection at the centre of efforts to manage production risks. The latest review also highlighted a significant tightening of standards across China's national variety trial system. The changes are aimed at ensuring that varieties entering official trials meet stronger requirements and that the testing process more accurately reflects real-world agricultural conditions. One of the most notable changes has been stricter screening before varieties are admitted into trials. Authorities have increased scrutiny of variety sources and application materials, resulting in the rejection of 34 per cent more unqualified wheat trial applications compared with the same period last year. The stronger entry controls are intended to improve the quality of the trial pool itself. By preventing unsuitable varieties from entering the system, regulators can concentrate testing resources on materials with stronger technical and commercial potential while reducing inefficiencies later in the evaluation process. The technical design of trials has also been adjusted to better reflect production realities. For rapeseed, a new density-tolerance trial group was introduced for the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The addition recognises the importance of evaluating varieties under planting densities that increasingly reflect actual cultivation practices in major production regions. Such changes are significant because variety performance can vary substantially depending on cultivation conditions. A variety that performs well under one planting density, climate or production system may not deliver comparable results elsewhere. Greater alignment between trial conditions and commercial farming practices can therefore improve the usefulness of variety evaluation before new genetics are widely promoted. Supervision throughout the trial process has also been strengthened. Authorities have implemented unannounced inspections and field surveys covering the full trial cycle, rather than relying primarily on scheduled evaluations. The tougher oversight appears to have produced measurable results. Since the launch of special rectification measures, the incidence of violations in variety trials has fallen by more than 60 per cent year on year. At the same time, the overall elimination rate of varieties participating in trials reached 51 per cent this year. The high elimination rate suggests that the system is becoming more selective about which varieties progress through the evaluation process. For China's seed industry, that shift could have important consequences. A more rigorous trial system can raise the bar for variety developers, but it can also increase confidence in varieties that successfully complete the process. Stronger screening and supervision can help ensure that varieties reaching farmers have been tested against clearly defined agronomic criteria and production conditions. The meeting also placed variety trials within the wider objectives of China's agricultural and rural modernisation agenda during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Three priorities emerged from the discussions: raising agricultural yields at scale, strengthening the sector's ability to prevent and mitigate disasters, and supporting implementation of the country's seed industry revitalisation initiative. The emphasis on large-scale yield improvement reflects the continuing importance of productivity growth. As agricultural land and other resources face constraints, increasing output increasingly depends on technological improvements, better management and genetic progress. Variety development can play a particularly important role because genetic improvements can influence production outcomes across large areas once a successful variety is commercialised. Higher yield potential, disease resistance, stable performance and improved quality can collectively increase productivity without requiring proportional increases in land or other resources. The second priority—disaster prevention and mitigation—has become increasingly important as farmers face greater variability in growing conditions. The experience of delayed autumn sowing in the 2025-2026 season provided a practical demonstration of how varietal selection can become part of the agricultural risk-management toolkit. The third priority is the continued implementation of China's seed industry revitalisation strategy. The national variety trial system is a critical link between breeding and commercial deployment because it determines which new varieties receive further consideration for production. The meeting called for continued improvements across the entire testing system. These include refining technical standards, upgrading trial infrastructure, strengthening supervision and management, and improving the overall quality and efficiency of variety evaluation. The objective is not simply to conduct more trials, but to make the trials more scientifically robust, operationally efficient and relevant to the conditions farmers actually face. Shanxi Province is also positioning itself to play a greater role in this process. The province said it would make full use of its germplasm resources and diverse ecological zones to strengthen variety development and evaluation. Its strategy involves implementing variety management across the full value chain, from breeding and testing through to demonstration and application. Shanxi also plans to strengthen collaborative breeding research and accelerate the conversion of research achievements into commercially usable varieties. The province's ecological diversity provides an opportunity to test crop genetics under different production conditions. Such testing can help breeders identify varieties with stable performance across environments rather than varieties that perform strongly only under a narrow set of conditions. The focus on full-chain variety management is equally important. Agricultural innovation does not end when a new variety is bred. The commercial impact depends on whether the variety can pass formal testing, demonstrate performance under production conditions, reach farmers efficiently and deliver measurable improvements in yield, quality or resilience. China's latest approach therefore points towards a more integrated model of variety development, in which breeding, testing, demonstration and commercial promotion are treated as connected stages rather than isolated activities. The experience of the 2025-2026 season also highlights the growing strategic value of crop genetics in managing agricultural uncertainty. The ability to deploy varieties that tolerate delayed sowing, resist diseases or maintain stable yields can provide farmers with an additional layer of protection when weather or other production conditions deviate from expectations. For wheat, rapeseed and potatoes, this could mean greater emphasis on varieties that combine yield potential with resilience. Instead of pursuing maximum yield under ideal conditions alone, breeders and evaluators are increasingly being asked to consider performance stability, disease resistance, quality characteristics and tolerance to production stresses. The tightening of trial standards may also have implications for seed companies and breeding institutions. As entry requirements and monitoring become more rigorous, developers will need stronger evidence supporting the performance and characteristics of candidate varieties. At the same time, a more transparent and disciplined evaluation system could create a clearer pathway for high-performing varieties to reach commercial agriculture. The 51 per cent elimination rate illustrates the scale of this selection process. More than half of participating varieties being eliminated means that the national system is applying significant pressure on breeding materials to demonstrate value under formal evaluation conditions. The national variety trial programme is therefore evolving from a conventional testing mechanism into a more strategic component of China's agricultural resilience agenda. Its role increasingly extends beyond determining which varieties perform well to identifying genetics capable of addressing specific challenges facing production. The direction is particularly relevant as China enters the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Higher yields, greater resilience to agricultural disasters and accelerated seed industry development are closely connected. Variety innovation can influence all three objectives simultaneously. The 2026-2027 trial programme will now provide another opportunity to test that strategy. With stronger entry screening, more production-oriented technical standards, tighter field supervision and greater emphasis on infrastructure, China's crop variety evaluation system is moving towards a more selective and performance-focused model. The larger message from the Jinzhong meeting is that China's seed strategy is becoming increasingly focused on measurable agricultural outcomes. The objective is not simply to breed new varieties, but to identify genetics capable of delivering higher and more stable production under the conditions farmers actually encounter. As climate variability, production risks and the need for greater agricultural productivity continue to shape the sector, that distinction will become increasingly important. China's experience with delayed sowing has already demonstrated how much can be achieved when varietal innovation is aligned with a specific production challenge.   ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4534/nova-pangaea-hits-key-milestone-with-72-hour-waste-to-saf-technology-trials.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4534/nova-pangaea-hits-key-milestone-with-72-hour-waste-to-saf-technology-trials.html Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:27:29 +0530 UK-based Nova Pangaea Technologies has completed a new round of endurance trials for its sustainable aviation fuel technology, demonstrating continuous and stable operation for up to 72 hours and achieving yields above its target levels as the company moves closer to commercial deployment. The trials were carried out at Nova Pangaea's demonstration plant in Teesside and mark another milestone for the company as it prepares to raise capital for its first commercial-scale facility. The results come at a time when the aviation industry is under growing pressure to expand sustainable aviation fuel production and diversify beyond its current dependence on waste oils and fats. Nova Pangaea's technology is built around its proprietary REFNOVA process, which converts waste biomass and agricultural residues into bioethanol. That ethanol can subsequently be upgraded into sustainable aviation fuel or renewable diesel, creating a pathway for materials such as wood chips, sawdust and wheat straw to enter the low-carbon fuel supply chain. The latest trials focused on softwood residues generated by the timber-processing industry. Multiple production runs were conducted at the Teesside facility, processing up to three tonnes of feedstock per day. According to the company, the demonstration runs delivered stable continuous operation and yields that exceeded expectations. The results build on smaller-scale trials conducted in early 2025, when Nova Pangaea demonstrated that its process could operate beyond laboratory conditions. The latest campaign takes that validation further, testing the technology over extended production periods of up to three days. A further round of trials is planned for next year as the company works to refine the design of its first commercial-scale plant. For Nova Pangaea, the technology has an additional advantage beyond producing renewable fuel. The REFNOVA process also generates biochar, a carbon-rich co-product capable of permanently storing carbon. The company says this combination allows its overall production pathway to become carbon-negative, removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than is released through the process. The technology is also central to Project Speedbird, an initiative involving Nova Pangaea, British Airways and LanzaJet and supported by the UK government. Under the project, Nova Pangaea plans to develop four facilities in the UK that will convert locally sourced waste biomass into bioethanol, which can then be upgraded into sustainable aviation fuel. The project is part of a broader effort to create a more diversified supply base for SAF. While demand for sustainable aviation fuel is increasing, the industry continues to face constraints around the availability of suitable feedstocks. “The latest trials have validated our technology and should further underpin the confidence of investors on our journey towards building our first commercial plant,” said Stewart Stewart, CEO of Nova Pangaea. He said the SAF sector had reached a critical stage, with rising demand creating an urgent need to expand the range of sustainable feedstocks available to fuel producers. “The SAF industry is currently at a critical point,” Stewart said. “Demand is increasing and supply chain shocks such as in the Middle East show the need to find an alternative to fossil fuels, yet aviation is currently reliant on SAF from a single feedstock, which will not be enough to meet growing SAF demand.” The successful endurance trials could strengthen Nova Pangaea's case as it seeks funding for commercial expansion. More importantly, they offer another indication that agricultural and forestry residues could play a larger role in supplying the next generation of sustainable aviation fuel. With its technology now demonstrated through extended continuous operation, Nova Pangaea is positioning REFNOVA as a potential route to unlock waste biomass that has so far remained largely outside the mainstream SAF supply chain. The next challenge will be translating that technical progress into commercial-scale production and proving that a broader range of locally available waste materials can help meet aviation's rapidly growing demand for low-carbon fuel.   ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4504/gotablanca-500-proves-effective-in-strawberry-field-trial-at-university-of-florida.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/4504/gotablanca-500-proves-effective-in-strawberry-field-trial-at-university-of-florida.html Thu, 20 Aug 2026 09:00:47 +0530 ClearLeaf, a Costa Rican company with proven success in formulating non-toxic agricultural products to protect important crops, today announced that its non-toxic fungi bactericide, GotaBlanca, proved highly effective in controlling the devastating Pestalotia leaf spot and fruit rot diseases in field strawberries in a trial conducted by the University of Florida’s Gulf Coast Research and Education Center.  UF researchers designed the study to identify fungicide alternatives to control Neopestalotiopsis, the causal agent of this aggressive and rapidly emerging disease that have pushed growers to their limits in Florida and other growing regions in the Americas.  Concerns about fungicide resistance underscore the need for additional products with different modes of action to support long-term disease management. The trial evaluated a range of fungicide mixes and formulations alongside a new generation of technologies.  GotaBlanca significantly outperformed some of the other new generation technologies, with the added benefits of having a low risk of generating microbial resistance and being non-toxic to soils, workers and on-farm biological diversity. “We are pleased with the results but not surprised,” said Dr. Agustin Buchert, Chief Science Officer at ClearLeaf. “They are consistent with our proven efficacy on more than 50 different fungal and bacterial pathogens in more than 40 crops. Strawberry growers in our Latin American markets use GotaBlanca specifically as a non-toxic strategy for Neopestalotiopsis, which also breaks resistance and reduces re-entry periods.” The lead researcher, Dr. Natalia Peres at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center commented "“Growers need additional fungicide options for managing Neopestalotiopsis, and our objective was to evaluate how new products perform under Florida field conditions. GotaBlanca performed well in this trial and merits further evaluation.” GotaBlanca is particularly relevant for strawberry growers because of how it works and what it does not leave behind. GotaBlanca does not interfere with plant metabolism or photosynthesis, so it supports crop vigor rather than costing yield. Its multi-site mode of action gives pathogens no single target to adapt to, so it presents a much lower risk of resistance development than products with a single-site mode of action. Because the formulation is non-toxic to workers, soil biology and on-farm beneficial organisms, it shortens or removes re-entry restrictions, allowing picking crews back into the block without interrupting harvest, and leaves no residue of regulatory concern for buyers and export markets. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3574/from-domestic-strength-to-global-influence-brazils-bioinput-playbook.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3574/from-domestic-strength-to-global-influence-brazils-bioinput-playbook.html Wed, 11 Feb 2026 12:12:41 +0530 Mauro Heringer tells Agrospectrum how regulatory coordination, tropical biotech and sovereign innovation are positioning Brazil at the center of regenerative agriculture In an exclusive interview with Agrospectrum, Mauro Heringer, Director of International Relations at ABINBIO and Member of the National Bioinputs Export Committee (ApexBrasil), outlined how Brazil’s dominance in tropical bioinputs is reshaping global agricultural markets. He emphasized that Brazil’s competitive edge lies in its “Proof of Tropical Resilience,” with biological solutions tested across six biomes under extreme climatic and pest pressures—conditions that validate their robustness for global deployment. Heringer highlighted regulatory harmonization, living logistics, and institutional coordination under Law 15,070/2024 as central to accelerating exports while positioning Brazil as a benchmark for sustainable agricultural biotechnology. Framing bioinputs as a matter of national security and technological sovereignty, he asserted that Brazil’s ambition extends beyond exports to leading a global transition toward high-performance regenerative agriculture. From Domestic Success to Export Strategy Brazil has built a large and sophisticated domestic bio-inputs market. What specific capabilities or lessons from domestic adoption give Brazilian companies a competitive edge when entering highly regulated international markets? Brazil’s success in the bioinputs sector is not merely a function of sales volume—it reflects deep biotechnological and institutional maturity that has given rise to a true “tropical innovation ecosystem.” The country’s competitive advantage rests on what can be called the Proof of Tropical Resilience. Unlike competitors operating in temperate climates, Brazilian companies develop bioinputs for an environment defined by six distinct biomes within a single territory, continuous year-round cultivation cycles, intense pest pressure and high temperatures. These are among the most challenging agricultural conditions in the world—and Brazil has learned to innovate within them. This is where the real advantage lies: the tropicalization of biotechnology. Brazil does not simply “sell the bottle.” It exports the expertise required to replace or complement synthetic chemistry in highly productive agricultural systems under extreme biological stress. As a result, Brazilian companies are not commodity suppliers. They are holders of strategic intellectual property essential to advancing sustainable global food security. The lesson is straightforward: if a biological solution performs consistently across Brazilian biomes—particularly in the Cerrado—it possesses more than enough robustness for virtually any other agricultural region in the world. Brazil exports resilience, not just microorganisms. Regulatory Asymmetry Across Markets How does the export committee plan to navigate starkly different regulatory regimes for biological inputs in the EU, the United States, and Latin America, and where do you see the greatest bottlenecks to market access? I will start from the end of the question. In my view, the biggest bottlenecks are regulatory alignment and what I call “Living Logistics.” Exporting chemicals is relatively straightforward. Exporting living organisms—bacteria and fungi—is fundamentally different. It requires cold-chain infrastructure, precision logistics and strict control over viability and shelf-life throughout transit. Maintaining biological stability over long international distances remains the most significant technical and commercial challenge. On the regulatory front, asymmetries between countries create additional complexity. Rules, compliance standards and legal frameworks vary widely, making harmonization a strategic priority. To address this, a formal partnership was established in mid-2025 between ApexBrasil and CropLife Brasil, which recently welcomed ABINBIO (Brazilian Association of Bioinput Industries). Together, they formed the National Bioinputs Export Committee, a platform designed to coordinate international expansion and regulatory strategy. Navigating global markets requires differentiated approaches, as regulatory cultures are not uniform. In the European Union, the framework is guided by the Precautionary Principle, which emphasizes intrinsic hazard. There, our strategy is centered almost entirely on demonstrating toxicological safety, purity and the absence of contaminants. We do not sell “productivity” to Europe—we sell food safety and the elimination of chemical residues. The positioning should resemble an “Intel Inside” for agriculture: if it carries Brazilian bio-technology, it represents sustainability and safety. In the United States, the regulatory philosophy—led by the EPA—is pragmatic and risk-based. The focus must therefore be on agronomic efficacy. Our dossiers emphasize large-scale performance data generated across millions of Brazilian hectares under tropical conditions. This industrial-scale validation offers something that controlled laboratory trials alone cannot replicate. In Latin America, the priority should be regional harmonization. Here, the challenge is largely political and institutional. Alignment within Mercosur is essential, with Brazil’s regulatory approval—already subject to rigorous scrutiny by MAPA, ANVISA and IBAMA, under one of the world’s most advanced bioinput frameworks—serving as a regional quality benchmark. The objective is mutual recognition: if a product has been approved by the tropical leader, Brazil, it should qualify for fast-track registration in neighboring markets such as Paraguay, Colombia and Bolivia. In short, the pathway to global expansion requires regulatory intelligence, logistical innovation and geopolitical coordination—not just technological excellence. Branding “Brazil” in Sustainability-Driven Markets The project emphasizes brand positioning around sustainability and bioeconomy. How do you reconcile Brazil’s leadership in bio-inputs with ongoing international scrutiny of its broader environmental record, particularly in land use and deforestation? This is a fundamental question. First, it is important to adjust the premise of the question with data. Often, the narrative imposed on the sustainability issue is a distorted and uninformed view. Brazil is an agro-environmental powerhouse: we preserve more than 60 per cent of our territory with native vegetation and possess the most rigorous environmental legislation in the world (the Forest Code) and, now, modern Bioinput legislation. No other major food producer delivers these numbers.Our leadership in Bioinputs is not an attempt to "compensate" for a problem, but rather the natural evolution of this preservationist mindset. Thanks to our tropical biotechnology (such as Biological Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium Fixation and no-till farming), we have managed to increase production by 400 per cent in recent decades while expanding the land area by only 40 per cent.Therefore, Brazil needs to be emulated. By exporting bioinputs, we are offering the world the same technology that allows us to be the only country feeding 1 billion people while preserving the majority of its forests. Innovation vs. Standardization Tension Biological inputs often require localized formulations and application protocols. How does Brazil balance the need for market-specific adaptation with the efficiencies required for scalable global exports? We solve this dilemma through a "Platform Biology" strategy. The common mistake is thinking that one exports a "ready-to-use final product" just like a chemical pesticide. Brazil has learned to export the Base Technology and Application Know-How.In Industry Standardization (Upstream): Brazil has achieved global excellence in industrial development. Our factories produce spores and metabolites with very high concentration and purity and extended shelf-life. This is standardizable and scalable worldwide. It is the biological "hardware."In Field Adaptation (Downstream): The "software" (how to use it) is adaptable. Our companies don’t just sell the jug; they sell the agronomic protocol. We have formulation technology that allows the same tested robust strain to be activated or applied differently depending on Indian or American soil. Thus, efficiency comes from the industrial scale of our fermentation; adaptation comes from the robustness of our tropical strains. If a bacterium survives the stress of Brazilian soil, it performs easily in less hostile environments.Brazil does not export a "medicine," but rather a "treatment system." By separating the biological asset (standardized) from the application intelligence (localized), companies achieve the benefits of mass production without the risk of inefficacy in foreign soils. Domestic Ownership as Strategic Advantage With over 80 per cent of bio-input companies being Brazilian-owned, how does domestic ownership shape innovation, capital formation, and long-term export competitiveness compared to multinational-dominated ag-input sectors? The fact that Brazil’s bioinput sector is predominantly national in capital structure—historically over 80 per cent —is a positive anomaly within Brazilian agribusiness, which has traditionally been dependent on multinational chemical and seed companies. This domestic foundation has fostered a form of biotechnological sovereignty that significantly reshapes Brazil’s export competitiveness. However, intellectual honesty requires a distinction between the sector’s historical structure and its current market dynamics. The premise that the sector remains mostly national is still statistically defensible when measured by number of companies. Brazil has hundreds of registered bioinput firms—many of them small and medium-sized regional agritechs. If one counts by tax ID (CNPJ), the majority are indeed Brazilian-owned. But when the metric shifts from number of companies to revenue concentration and market share, the picture is evolving rapidly. Multinational giants such as Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva and UPL—as well as foreign investment groups—have accelerated acquisitions of leading Brazilian bioinput firms. Once a Brazilian company is acquired, it continues operating locally, but capital allocation decisions and long-term strategic direction shift to a global headquarters. Why is this happening? Because the Brazilian bioinput sector has become one of the most profitable and dynamic segments in agribusiness, turning it into a primary target for mergers and acquisitions. Many companies that began with 100 per cent national capital were acquired precisely because multinationals struggled to replicate the speed of Brazilian innovation or navigate Brazil’s complex regulatory and agronomic landscape as effectively as local players. This creates a strategic paradox. Brazil risks becoming an exceptional “nursery of biological startups”—a global laboratory for innovation—whose most successful companies are absorbed by foreign capital once they achieve maturity and export scale. At the same time, the very factors that attract multinational interest explain Brazil’s competitive edge. In global chemical conglomerates, biological products are often treated as complementary or defensive tools—designed to protect or extend the lifecycle of synthetic molecules. In contrast, for national Brazilian companies, bioinputs are not an add-on; they are the core business. That structural difference matters. When biology is the central strategy, 100 per cent of R&D investment is directed toward biological performance. There is no internal conflict of interest, such as the risk of cannibalizing sales of high-margin synthetic fungicides. In large chemical corporations, a disruptive biological innovation can threaten existing revenue streams. In Brazilian bioinput companies, disruption is the objective. The result is faster innovation cycles, greater technological boldness and a development pipeline focused purely on biological efficiency under tropical conditions. This strategic clarity—biology as mission, not supplement—is what transformed Brazil into a global reference in bioinputs. The challenge now is ensuring that this innovative sovereignty is not diluted as consolidation accelerates. Competition with Established Multinationals As global agrochemical and biotech firms rapidly expand their biological portfolios, where does Brazil see its most defensible competitive moat—cost, performance in tropical systems, speed of innovation, or something else? Our defensive moat is, without a doubt, Proven Performance in Tropical Systems. While multinationals compete by buying startups to build a portfolio, Brazil has an advantage that cannot be bought: decades of natural selection in the field.The 'Tropicalization' Factor: Biology is context-dependent. A fungus developed in a laboratory in Europe might die in two hours under the sun in Mato Grosso (or Maharashtra). Our strains were isolated and selected under extreme thermal and water stress. They are "elite athletes" of survival.Real Scale vs. Greenhouse: Multinationals test in controlled greenhouses. Brazil tests on 40 million hectares of commercial crops. We have the world’s largest database on how bioinputs interact with the real environment.Cost-Benefit: Since we master large-scale fermentation (on-farm and industrial), we can deliver this elite biology at a cost that makes its use viable in commodities (soybeans, corn, cotton, sugarcane, etc.), not just in expensive fruits.Application Science and Coexistence (Compatibility): Foreign multinationals usually sell the "bottle." Brazilian companies sell the management. Brazil has learned to mix biologicals with chemicals in the same spray tank without inactivating the microorganism. This knowledge regarding formulation stability and chemical compatibility is what global producers want most today to reduce costs.The Brazilian "Pipeline": Brazil possesses the greatest microbial biodiversity in the world. The ability to isolate, test, and register new assets with agility creates an innovation cycle that multinationals, with their global bureaucratic structures, struggle to match. Institutional Coordination and Governance What concrete mechanisms will ensure that the export committee translates coordination into measurable outcomes—such as export growth or regulatory approvals—rather than remaining a symbolic platform? The Committee began its work at the end of 2025. To ensure the export committee does not become a "symbolic platform" without practical delivery, the governance of the bioinput sector in Brazil is being structured on technical execution mechanisms and commercial diplomacy.Law No. 15,070/2024 provides the legal basis, but the translation into measurable results depends on three pillars of institutional coordination. The committee does not act only in commercial promotion, but in the convergence of standards. The concrete mechanism is the creation of joint working groups with bodies such as EFSA (Europe) and the EPA (USA), aiming to reduce registration time abroad through the acceptance of data generated in Brazil (mutual recognition).The committee utilizes the rigor of the new legal framework to advocate that biological efficacy dossiers approved by MAPA (Ministry of Agriculture) be accepted as technical proof in other countries, eliminating the need to repeat field tests that last years.Institutional coordination involves ApexBrasil, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Supply in a market segmentation program. Examples such as the creation of an export "Bio-Pipeline" can be cited. The committee identifies biotechnological bottlenecks in partner countries and can directly connect Brazilian companies that have the specific solution through diplomatic missions, trade fairs, events, and through agricultural attachés at Brazilian embassies in key countries.Another aspect to prevent Brazilian products from being blocked by subjective sustainability issues is the implementation of Certification and Traceability Support within a Bioinput Conformity Seal system. Audits will ensure that the exported input meets bioeconomy and low carbon emission requirements, integrating them into the national bioinput program. Long-Term Market Transformation Do you view Brazil’s push into biological inputs primarily as an export opportunity, or as part of a broader effort to reshape global crop protection and fertility markets away from synthetic inputs—and how does that ambition influence policy and investment priorities? This is the question that defines the "endgame" for Brazil. The strategic answer is that export is merely the vehicle, but the global paradigm shift is the destination. Brazil doesn’t just want to be the largest exporter of bioinputs; it intends to be the architect of the new era of world agriculture.This is, undoubtedly, a global paradigm shift. Export is just the economic consequence; the cause is the survival necessity of modern agriculture. Brazil doesn’t just want to sell a substitute for chemicals; we want to lead the transition to the Era of High-Performance Regenerative Agriculture.We are positioning ourselves to be the "Saudi Arabia of Green Chemistry." Just as the Middle East was indispensable in the oil era, Brazil will be indispensable in the bioeconomy era. We are not just "moving away" from synthetics; we are integrating biological tools to create a smarter and more resilient system.This vision changes everything. Our investment priorities have shifted from the logic of "technology importation" to "technological sovereignty." The National Bioinput Plan and the APEX Brasil Bioinput Export Committee Project are proof that the Brazilian State has decided that biotechnology is strategic for national and global security.The Brazilian offensive aims to reposition synthetic inputs (especially fossil-based nitrogen fertilizers and high-toxicity pesticides) as high-risk assets with high environmental costs. The vulnerability revealed by global crises (such as the fertilizer shortage in 2022) accelerated the National Fertilizer Plan and the Bioinput Legal Framework (Law 15,070/2024). Brazil treats bioinputs as a matter of national security. The ambition is to reduce external dependence on mineral fertilizers by up to 50 per cent in the coming decades.By proving this is possible on a continental scale, Brazil creates a "demonstration effect" for the rest of the world, leading a movement for biotechnological food sovereignty. We are redesigning the architecture of food production. The future is biological, and Brazil is the laboratory where this future has already begun.I invite India to join us on this journey. Together, as leaders of the Global South, we have the responsibility and the capacity to define how the world will feed itself over the next 50 years: with more biology, more biotechnology, and more respect for our tropical soils and the people who are here and their future generations. --- Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com) ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3522/from-estate-to-algorithm-how-canopy-is-turning-coffee-farms-into-climate-ready-intelligence-systems.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3522/from-estate-to-algorithm-how-canopy-is-turning-coffee-farms-into-climate-ready-intelligence-systems.html Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:15:10 +0530 A second-generation planter and AI researcher explains how lived plantation wisdom, satellite intelligence, and public–private collaboration are reshaping Indian coffee from the ground up In an exclusive interview with Agrospectrum, Sooraj Kandathil Babu, Founder & CEO of NeuBiom Labs and a second-generation coffee planter with a deep research background in AI, explains how lived estate experience shaped Canopy, a satellite- and AI-driven crop intelligence platform built for real plantation decisions. He discusses how Canopy converts traditional field intuition into digital twins that strengthen climate resilience, improve quality consistency, and enable traceability and collective bargaining for growers and FPOs. The conversation also highlights why affordable deep tech, public–private collaboration, and long-term data partnerships are essential to stabilising incomes and future-proofing Indian coffee amid increasing climate volatility. From Estate to Algorithm You are a second-generation coffee planter building a deep-tech platform rooted in satellite intelligence and AI. What specific pain points from your own plantation experience shaped Canopy’s architecture, and how did you translate traditional field intuition into a scalable digital “crop intelligence” model ? Most people experience coffee only as a finished product, something ordered at a café or picked off a supermarket shelf. What remains largely invisible is the one-year crop cycle that shapes that cup. When you spend time on plantations, the contrast becomes stark. I have seen two adjacent estates, with similar soil and climate, produce vastly different outcomes, one yielding 15 bags per acre, the other nearly double. The difference is rarely geography; it is almost always practice. How growers observe their farms, when they intervene, and how consistently they follow scientific cultivation principles. That gap in outcomes was the first pain point that shaped Canopy’s architecture. Traditional plantation wisdom is rich, but it is often unrecorded. We began by digitising this intuition through what we call a plantation journal, a structured cultivation diary that captures day-to-day farm activities. These records are then analysed alongside local weather patterns and satellite-derived plantation health indicators, allowing us to correlate practices with outcomes and provide context-specific advisories rather than generic recommendations. The second challenge is climate resilience. Coffee is a climate-sensitive crop grown predominantly in regions already exposed to significant climate risk. Multiple studies indicate that many current coffee-growing regions could become unsuitable by 2050 if cultivation practices remain unchanged. This makes climate-resilient growing not optional, but essential. Canopy maps how each grower approaches cultivation and aligns those practices with globally recognised sustainable frameworks, translating abstract climate principles into actionable, plot-level guidance. Quality and market value form the third pillar. Our goal is not to turn every grower into a specialty coffee producer overnight, but to enable clusters of growers to achieve uniform, reliable quality over time. Through Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), a standardised package of practices can be deployed across hundreds of farms, improving outturn, grading consistency, and ultimately bargaining power in trade. Canopy supports this with transparent, traceable data that builds credibility across the value chain. Finally, there is technology adoption itself. Agriculture has long lagged behind other sectors in leveraging data and digital tools, despite being one of the most foundational industries. We believe technology, when applied sensibly and with a low barrier to entry, can only strengthen farming systems. Data-driven agriculture has proven its value globally; our focus is on adapting it to Indian conditions, starting with coffee, and earning trust gradually as growers see tangible benefits on their land. Canopy is, at its core, an attempt to translate field-level intuition into scalable crop intelligence, bridging the gap between estate wisdom and algorithmic insight, while keeping the grower firmly at the centre of the system. To add to that, both the founders of NeuBiom Labs come from a strong research background in artificial intelligence and user-centered engineering. My co-founder, Dr. Sooraj Krishna, holds a PhD in AI from Sorbonne University in France, and I am in the final stages of completing my PhD in AI at the University of Würzburg in Germany. In many ways, NeuBiom Labs is the outcome of applying rigorous academic research to the foundational problems we encounter every day on the ground, bridging deep science with real-world agricultural challenges. The Digital Twin Question Canopy creates a “digital twin” of each coffee plot. For growers and industry stakeholders, what decisions become materially better with this digital twin, yield forecasting, pest management, climate risk, or input optimisation, and where have you seen the strongest early impact? The real value of a digital twin is not in any single metric, but in how it improves decision-making across the crop cycle. For growers, Canopy’s digital twin functions as a living health report of each plot. It brings together local weather patterns, satellite-derived vegetative indices, soil indicators, and on-ground cultivation practices into a single, coherent view of plantation health. This allows growers to clearly understand what is affecting their crop and where intervention is needed. Based on this, the system recommends context-specific practices and provides short-term weather forecasts that help growers time their operations more effectively. For FPOs and grower collectives, the digital twin operates at a different scale. Instead of managing farms in isolation, FPOs gain a portfolio-level view of member plantations through comparable health and activity scores. This makes it possible to benchmark performance across growers, identify gaps early, and align field activities with organisational goals. For example, an FPO aiming to promote organic or low-input cultivation can push standardised practices across its members and monitor adoption over time. This structured approach significantly improves consistency in quality and outturn, which directly strengthens collective bargaining power in the market. At this stage, our strongest early impact has been in plantation visibility, practice standardisation, and operational planning for growers and FPOs. Coffee’s annual crop cycle means that advanced outcomes such as yield forecasting, early disease detection, and precise input optimisation require longitudinal data. As we complete full-cycle datasets across a growing number of plantations, these capabilities naturally become more robust and predictive. Ultimately, the digital twin evolves from a monitoring tool into a decision-confidence layer, supporting not just growers and FPOs, but also future stakeholders across trade, finance, and compliance, once the system is grounded in real, season-long plantation intelligence. Affordable Deep Tech: The Rs 2,999 Disruption Enterprise-grade crop intelligence globally is often priced far beyond the reach of smallholders. How did NeuBiom Labs engineer a platform that delivers satellite, AI and hyperlocal insights at Rs 2,999 per crop cycle without compromising data accuracy or depth? Affordability was not an afterthought for us; it was a design constraint from day one. If we want meaningful outcomes such as early disease detection or reliable yield forecasting, the system has to achieve wide-scale adoption. That simply isn’t possible if enterprise-grade crop intelligence remains priced beyond the reach of small and mid-sized growers. A large part of how we achieve this is through ecosystem leverage. NeuBiom Labs is incubated at the Atal Incubation Center at the Coffee Board of India, and the Agri Business Incubator at Kerala Agriculture University, and we are also part of the Google for Startups India. These institutions provide critical support in the form of infrastructure, cloud credits, research access, and grants, which allow us to subsidise costs during the adoption phase without compromising on data quality or analytical depth. Equally important is how we’ve engineered the platform itself. We made a conscious decision not to over-engineer the stack. Instead of building complex, expensive systems that look impressive on paper, we focused on crisp, purpose-driven tools that directly serve agronomic decision-making. This keeps compute costs low, workflows efficient, and insights actionable, ensuring the stakeholders pay only for value they can actually use. User-centred engineering is the third pillar. Over the past year, we co-developed Canopy alongside 23 progressive coffee growers, spending extensive time on plantations to understand how decisions are made in real conditions. This helped us strip away unnecessary complexity and design interfaces and insights that align with how growers think and operate, rather than forcing them to adapt to technology. Ultimately, the Rs 2,999 pricing is not about undercutting the market, it’s about building trust and momentum. Once growers experience the tangible benefits of data-driven cultivation, we see compounding impact: better practices, improved quality and yield, richer datasets, and increasingly powerful intelligence across seasons. That virtuous cycle is what allows deep tech to remain both affordable and scalable in Indian agriculture. Climate Volatility and Coffee’s New Risk Curve Indian coffee faces increasing stress from erratic rainfall, temperature spikes and pest outbreaks. How does Canopy move beyond reactive advisories to predictive risk management, and can it realistically stabilise incomes for small and marginal coffee growers? True, climate volatility has fundamentally altered the risk curve for coffee in India. Erratic rainfall, temperature spikes, and shifting pest dynamics are no longer exceptions, they are the new normal. Yet, despite these changes, a large proportion of small and marginal growers continue to rely on traditional calendars and inherited practices that were designed for a far more stable climate. Canopy moves beyond reactive advisories by anchoring decision-making in context. Each plantation is geo-tagged, allowing advisories to be localised rather than regional averages. More importantly, like we discussed before, the system continuously maps the grower’s cultivation practices through a structured plantation journal and correlates these actions with evolving local weather patterns and plantation health indicators. Advisories are generated not just based on “what the weather is,” but on how the grower is farming under those conditions. This is where predictive risk management begins. Instead of responding after damage occurs, growers start to see patterns, how certain practices amplify climate stress, while others buffer against it. Our systems are trained on authenticated and certified coffee cultivation practices relevant to Indian conditions, ensuring that recommendations are agronomically sound and locally applicable. The impact is not instantaneous. Climate resilience is built over a crop cycle, not in a single intervention. But as growers become more aware of ground realities and begin making data-driven decisions, timing operations better, adjusting inputs, and avoiding unnecessary stress on the plant, we see measurable improvements in crop health, consistency, and outturn. Over time, this translates into better quality and more predictable volumes, which directly strengthens growers’ bargaining power. Income stabilisation, especially for smallholders, becomes far more realistic when this approach is adopted at scale, ideally through FPOs or farmer collectives. At the collective level, risk is no longer borne by isolated individuals. Uniform practices, shared intelligence, and aggregated quality enable more stable market positioning, even in volatile climatic conditions. NeuBiom Labs or Canopy does not claim to eliminate climate risk. What it does is convert uncertainty into informed action, helping growers shift from reactive survival to proactive resilience, one crop cycle at a time. From Farm to Federation: Scaling Beyond the Plot Farmer Producer Organisations, cooperatives and boards need aggregated intelligence, not just farm-level dashboards. How does Canopy translate dispersed plot-level data into decision-grade insights for institutions managing thousands of growers across regions? We see this challenge very clearly, and addressing it is central not just to Canopy, but to the broader mission of NeuBiom Labs. If you look at a region like Wayanad alone, there are over 60,000 coffee growers. Yet how they cultivate, the practices they follow, the health of their plantations, and their evolving responses to climate stress remain largely undocumented and fragmented. This makes coordinated intervention at an institutional level extremely difficult. As a side note, this also means, the traditional and indigenous knowledge our seniors developed with their years of experience on the ground are undocumented. These insights exist largely in memory and practice, not in records. If this knowledge is not captured now, an entire generation of experiential wisdom risks being lost. In parallel with building Canopy, we are consciously working to document and structure this lived knowledge, so future growers have a foundation to build on rather than starting from scratch. Canopy is intentionally designed as a layered intelligence stack, not just a farm dashboard. The mobile app and institutional dashboard are only the visible interfaces. Beneath them sits a core AI layer that includes domain-specific GIS inference engines and a language model fine-tuned exclusively for coffee cultivation. This layer synthesises dispersed plot-level data, activities, health indicators, weather exposure, and spatial patterns, into structured, comparable signals. As adoption scales, this enables institutions such as FPOs, cooperatives, and boards to move from anecdotal understanding to evidence-backed decision-making. Instead of asking what is happening, they can ask why it is happening, where intervention will have the highest impact, and which practices consistently produce better outcomes. This allows for region-wise benchmarking, optimisation of input distribution, targeted extension efforts, and early identification of systemic risks affecting quality or yield. More importantly, this intelligence operates upstream. Institutions can intervene at the practice level, well before harvest, by pushing standardised packages, adjusting advisory focus, or aligning growers toward specific quality or sustainability goals. Over time, this can raise average yield per region, improve uniformity of produce, and significantly strengthen market positioning. What Canopy offers today is the foundation, bringing stakeholders into a shared, data-driven framework for farming. The stack is deliberately built to evolve. As datasets mature across full crop cycles and adoption deepens, the intelligence shifts from descriptive to predictive, and from operational support to strategic planning. In that sense, scaling beyond the plot is not an add-on feature; it is the natural outcome of designing agriculture as a system rather than a collection of isolated farms. Traceability as a Trade Weapon With Europe and other premium markets tightening sustainability, deforestation and origin norms, traceability is fast becoming non-negotiable. How does Canopy’s end-to-end tracking position Indian coffee against competitors like Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia in compliance-heavy global markets? India is currently classified as a low-risk origin under emerging regulations such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). However, low risk does not automatically translate into market access, especially in premium and compliance-heavy export markets that are increasingly dominated by large, vertically integrated players. For India’s predominantly smallholder-driven coffee sector, traceability becomes the key enabler to participate on equal footing. Canopy positions traceability not as a post-harvest paperwork exercise, but as a cultivation-first system. Wide adoption of the Canopy stack allows FPOs to standardise coffee cultivation practices across hundreds of small growers, while ensuring farm-level quality control and transparent activity records. This creates verifiable evidence of how coffee is grown, not just where it comes from. From a global trade perspective, this is critical. Competing origins like Brazil, Vietnam, and Colombia benefit from scale, mechanisation, and consolidated supply chains. India’s strength lies elsewhere, in shade-grown systems, biodiversity-friendly cultivation, and smallholder domination. Canopy translates these inherent advantages into structured, auditable data that buyers and regulators can trust. By maintaining traceable records from plot-level practices through harvest, the platform will soon support compliance with EUDR and other sustainability frameworks, while simultaneously building credibility for certifications and responsible sourcing claims. Over time, this shifts Indian coffee from being viewed as a fragmented supply to a verified, institutionally backed origin, capable of commanding premium pricing rather than competing purely on volume. As the Canopy ecosystem matures, its stakeholders naturally expand, from growers and FPOs to exporters, buyers, financiers, and compliance bodies, each drawing value from the same shared source of truth. In that sense, traceability becomes more than a regulatory requirement; it becomes a strategic trade instrument that allows Indian coffee to compete, differentiate, and negotiate from a position of strength in global markets. Public–Private Synergy in Agri-Tech Canopy’s launch at the CCRI centenary, with backing from the Coffee Board, AIC-CCRI and global ecosystem partners, signals a rare convergence of science, policy and start-ups. What role should public institutions play in accelerating the adoption of crop intelligence platforms at scale? The support we’ve received so far has been exceptional and deeply collaborative. Institutions such as Kerala Startup Mission, the Agri Business Incubator at Kerala Agricultural University, the Atal Incubation Center at the Coffee Board, Google for Startups, Wadhwani Foundation, EarthOn Foundation, our academic institutions, and, most importantly, the growers and FPOs we work with, have all contributed meaningfully to Canopy’s evolution. This convergence of policy, science, and entrepreneurship is exactly what agriculture needs at this moment. At a broader level, public institutions play a pivotal role in accelerating adoption of crop intelligence platforms by acting as trusted intermediaries. For most farmers, especially smallholders, technology adoption is not just a cost decision, it is a trust decision. When awareness and capacity-building programmes are led or endorsed by public institutions, it significantly reduces hesitation and shortens adoption cycles. Messaging around why data-driven cultivation matters, both in the short term for productivity and in the long term for climate resilience and market access, carries far greater credibility when it comes from institutional voices. Beyond awareness, public institutions can act as scale catalysts. Financial support in the form of grants, pilot subsidies, or outcome-linked incentives for using intelligent farming systems can dramatically accelerate adoption without burdening growers. This is particularly important in early phases, where benefits accrue over a crop cycle rather than immediately. Central bodies such as the Coffee Board of India and regional agricultural research centres can also serve as nodal intelligence hubs. By aggregating anonymised, region-level insights from platforms like Canopy, they can monitor ground-level deltas, identify systemic risks, refine extension strategies, and feed real-world data back into policy and research. Ultimately, public institutions don’t need to build technology themselves, but they can create the conditions for it to scale responsibly. By combining trust, standard-setting, financial support, and feedback mechanisms, they can ensure that crop intelligence platforms move from isolated pilots to national agricultural infrastructure. The Long View: Canopy Beyond Coffee Is Canopy a coffee-specific solution, or the foundation of a broader plantation intelligence stack? Over the next five years, how do you envision NeuBiom Labs evolving, across crops, geographies, or even into climate-linked finance and sustainability certification ecosystems? Today, Canopy is intentionally coffee-specific. Coffee is a climate-sensitive, globally traded crop with a long production cycle and complex stakeholder dynamics, which makes it an ideal starting point. But structurally, Canopy is designed as the foundation of a broader plantation intelligence stack, particularly for climate-sensitive cash crops where resilience, quality consistency, and traceability are becoming non-negotiable. For us, technology is not the end goal; it is the accelerator. The real determinant of success lies in operations, how deeply and effectively we work with growers, FPOs, and institutional stakeholders on the ground. Agriculture does not lend itself well to a simple “build-and-sell” software model. Our belief is that meaningful outcomes emerge only when platforms like Canopy are deployed as long-term partnerships, where data, practices, and incentives evolve together over time. Over the next five years, we see NeuBiom Labs expanding along three clear dimensions. First is geographic expansion, moving from regional depth to multi-region intelligence, where patterns and risks can be understood at landscape and corridor levels rather than isolated farms. Second is crop expansion, applying the same intelligence framework to other climate-sensitive plantation crops that share similar characteristics: long gestation periods, smallholder dominance, and exposure to climate and market volatility. The third dimension is ecosystem integration. As datasets mature across crop cycles, Canopy naturally becomes relevant to adjacent systems, climate-linked finance, sustainability certification, compliance reporting, and institutional risk assessment. When cultivation data is reliable, longitudinal, and traceable, it reduces uncertainty not just for growers, but also for buyers, lenders, insurers, and policymakers. In that sense, Canopy’s long view is not about becoming a one-size-fits-all platform, but about enabling a shared, data-driven workflow across agriculture. As stakeholders evolve, the stack evolves with them, ensuring that value is created collectively, and that the benefits of intelligence compound across the entire agricultural ecosystem. --- Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com) ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3504/union-budget-2026-expectations.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3504/union-budget-2026-expectations.html Wed, 07 Jan 2026 13:40:55 +0530 Resilience, efficiency & prosperity As Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveils Budget 2026, the nation demands more than routine allocations. Indian agriculture is at a historic inflection point. This Budget is expected to operationalise the Viksit Bharat 2047 vision, aiming to transform farming from a low-margin, input-heavy, staple-focused sector into a high-productivity, high-value, globally competitive engine. Economists, industry leaders, and multilateral agencies concur: Incremental tweaks have run out of runway, and structural reforms are imperative to bridge productivity gaps, restore soil and water health, and secure farmers’ livelihoods. “Budget 2026 must signal a decisive move from blanket input subsidies to outcome-linked support that rewards water-use efficiency, balanced fertilisation, and low-emission practices at the farm level,” asserts Prof. Ramesh Chand, Member (Agriculture), NITI Aayog.  Dr Ashok Gulati, Infosys Chair Professor for Agriculture at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)and former Chairman, Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), echoes the call for digitally verifiable, efficiency-led support: “Linking direct benefit transfers with soil health cards, precision nutrient management, and diversified cropping will reduce fiscal stress while lifting total factor productivity across both rainfed and irrigated systems.” The imperative is clear: Budget 2026 must transition from fragmented schemes to a coherent, science-led, productivity-centric agricultural strategy — a structural foundation for a globally competitive, climate-smart, and high-income Indian agriculture. The Foundation of 2025: From Intent to Implementation Budget 2025 laid important groundwork, signaling a shift from stop-gap support toward structural measures aimed at productivity and resilience. The launch of the Prime Minister Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana, targeting 100 low-productivity districts, marked the start of district-level agricultural renewal. Coupled with a six-year protein security initiative under the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses, it created stable procurement for tur, urad, and masoor, reducing India’s import dependence in key pulses. “Budget 2026 must accelerate India’s shift to a climate-resilient, value-enhanced agri-economy by scaling biologicals and unlocking the waste-to-wealth opportunity. Targeted fiscal support for biosolutions, soil health and circularity can boost productivity while reducing chemical dependence. ’’ — Krishna Mohan Puvvada, Regional President, (Middle East, India and Africa), Novonesis Experts argue the next step must embed climate intelligence into farm-level decisions. “Budget 2026 must fund monsoon-contingent nutrition advisories at scale — using rainfall analytics and soil data to dynamically adjust fertiliser recommendations — so farmers can shift from fixed schedules to climate-responsive feeding of crops,” says Dr Manish Singh, AVP–Technical & Marketing, Transworld Furtichem Limited. He proposes a unified Nutrient Efficiency Index (NEI), integrating soil-test data, cropping patterns, water use efficiency, and fertiliser balance. “Budgets and subsidies should be allocated based on NEI improvement, not fertiliser consumption. This drives balanced nutrition and scientific fertiliser use rather than volume-driven demand,” he added. “Budget 2026 must signal a decisive move from blanket input subsidies to outcome-linked support that rewards water use efficiency, balanced fertilisation and low-emission practices at the farm level.”​ — Dr Ramesh Chand, Member (Agriculture), NITI Aayog Budget 2026 also sought to ease liquidity bottlenecks by raising Kisan Credit Card limits from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, supporting smallholders, dairy farmers, fishers, and allied producers. Sectoral reforms — from the National Mission on High-Yielding Seeds and a five-year cotton revitalisation plan to institutions like Bihar’s Makhana Board — aimed to modernise production, while allocations for storage, logistics, and market infrastructure addressed post-harvest losses. “Budget 2026 must prioritise digital infrastructure, credit linkages, and rural capacity building to scale precision agriculture. Agri-drones, IoT and data analytics can boost yields, conserve resources and strengthen climate resilience. Targeted subsidies, public–private partnerships and R&D incentives will accelerate adoption, integrate technology with national agricultural databases, and shift India from subsidy dependence to self-reliant, innovation-led farming.”  – Agnishwar Jayaprakash, Founder and CEO of Garuda Aerospace Yet, experts insist these gains must now converge into a coherent resilience architecture. “The next Budget should consolidate irrigation, watershed, soil health, and climate missions into a single ‘National Resilient Farms Mission’ with district-level targets for water productivity and soil organic carbon,” says Dr V. K. Singh, Director, ICAR–Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA).  “Linking direct benefit transfers with soil health cards, precision nutrient management and diversified cropping will reduce fiscal stress while lifting total factor productivity across rainfed and irrigated systems.”​ — Dr. Ashok Gulati, Infosys Chair Professor for Agriculture at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) and former Chairman, Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) Dr Himanshu Pathak, Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), adds, “Every rupee for irrigation must be co-anchored with micro-irrigation, fertigation-ready soils, and climate-resilient varieties so public investment translates into real resilience on farmers’ fields.” Budget 2026 will ultimately be judged on whether it can convert these incremental foundations into a mission-driven, 2047-ready agricultural architecture that delivers genuine resilience, competitiveness, and prosperity for India’s farmers. Fixing the Foundations: The Budget That Must Rewire Subsidies, Markets and Science As Budget 2026 approaches, it is evident that Indian agriculture stands at a pivotal crossroads. The long-standing promise of doubling farmers’ incomes, once a political mantra, now demands a sober re-examination. Structural pressures—from climate volatility and shrinking margins to global competitiveness and rising nutritional expectations—have made incrementalism insufficient.  “The allocation of the budget should be done across three horizons: the immediate year, the next five years, and the long-term vision through 2047,” asserts Sandeepa Kanitkar, Chairman of BASAI and Managing Director of Kan Biosys, highlighting that India’s agricultural budget—barely 2 per cent of total expenditure—is glaringly inadequate for a sector that contributes 17 per cent of GDP, sustains 55 per cent of the population, and underpins the nutrition of 140 crore citizens. “The next Budget should consolidate irrigation, watershed, soil health and climate missions into a single ‘National Resilient Farms Mission’ with clear district targets for water productivity and soil organic carbon.”​ — Dr V. K. Singh, Director, ICAR–CRIDA The inefficiencies of current spending are stark when viewed through the prism of subsidies. India invests roughly Rs 1.75 – 2 lakh crore annually on fertilisers, electricity, MSP procurement, crop insurance, and other input-linked supports, yet the returns in productivity, soil health, water security, and farmer incomes remain worryingly low.  “Subsidies have historically encouraged consumption rather than efficiency,” Sandeepa notes. Cheap urea drives over-application, subsidised electricity has accelerated groundwater depletion, irrigation grants rarely incentivise precision water use, and MSP procurement entrenches cropping patterns that undermine soil regeneration. For sectoral leaders, Budget 2026 must mark a decisive philosophical pivot—from input-heavy, subsidy-driven policies to a science-led, technology-driven, and outcome-oriented framework.  Every rupee for irrigation must be co-anchored with micro-irrigation, fertigation-ready soils and climate-resilient varieties so that public investment translates into real resilience on farmers’ fields.”​ — Dr Himanshu Pathak, Ex- Director General, ICAR & Secretary, DARE S. Soundararadjane, CEO of HyFarm, points to the potato sector as a model: “India could build the world’s most advanced, predictable, and globally competitive potato ecosystem through a National Potato Innovation Mission. CRISPR-edited varieties, AI-powered breeding, drone-led phenotyping, and mass deployment of True Potato Seeds can transform production while reducing costs and disease risks. Region-specific varieties are not optional anymore—they are strategic imperatives.” “Budget 2026 must reform subsidies by shifting from consumption-based support to science-led, Package of Practice–linked incentives tied to production outcomes. Performance-based support will improve soil health, enhance resource efficiency, and raise farmer incomes. Mechanisation assistance should be delivered via DBT and limited to FMTTI/BIS-approved equipment to ensure quality, effectiveness, and measurable impact on the ground.”  - Ravindra Agrawal, Chairman, KisanKraft Ltd Sandeepa further advocates restructuring through Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT). “Subsidies must be given through DBT to farmers and allow them to use this money as per their wish. This has started with Kisan Samman Nidhi but must be extrapolated by diverting subsidies given for insurance, fertilisers, electricity, and water to DBT,” she explains. Such a shift would correct long-standing distortions, empower decision-making, sharply reduce leakages, and create the fiscal headroom necessary to invest in science, innovation, and climate resilience. “To truly raise farm incomes, storage, grading, logistics and digital marketplaces must be treated as core agricultural infrastructure, not peripheral add-ons.”​ — Sanjiv Puri, Managing Director, ITC Ltd “A key priority must be efficiency-driven subsidy reform. We need to shift from consumption-based subsidies to scientifically designed, Package of Practice (PoP)–linked incentives tied directly to production outcomes. Performance-based support improves soil health, enhances resource efficiency, and strengthens farmer incomes. Mechanisation support should be delivered through DBT and restricted strictly to FMTTI/BIS-approved equipment to ensure quality and impact in the field,” says Ravindra Agrawal, Chairman, KisanKraft Ltd, emphasizing that combining DBT with outcome-linked incentives can amplify impact across mechanisation, inputs, and farm management practices. “India’s next big leap will come from shifting towards processed, residue-compliant, traceable and climate-smart agri-exports rather than relying mainly on bulk commodity shipments.”​ — Abhishek Dev, Chairman, APEDA Markets, too, are evolving in ways that demand more sophisticated production systems. The rising domestic and global appetite for residue-free food is already accelerating India’s biopesticide segment. Sandeepa emphasises that a formal residue-free label—jointly administered by the Ministries of Health and Agriculture—could unlock higher farmer incomes through premium market categories. “Blanket reduction on CIB-registered biopesticides must be done at the earliest to 5 per cent,” she cautions, noting that inconsistent GST categorisation is harming both growers and industry participants seeking safer input adoption. “Targeted support for FPOs, agri-startups and interoperable e-market platforms can cut post-harvest losses, stabilise prices and make climate risk more manageable for smallholders.”​ — Dr. Ashok Dalwai, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC); Chairman, Karnataka Agriculture The export ecosystem is entering a decisive phase. “India must position itself as a trusted global supplier,” says Kuchibhotla Srinivas, Partner, Deloitte. Strategic export corridors, residue-free clusters, bilateral agreements, and harmonisation with global standards, he argues, can convert India’s scale into global influence.  “If India wants to lead in exports, supply chains must embed traceability, quality assurance, and sustainable input use,” adds Ankur Aggarwal, Executive Chairman, Crystal Crop Protection. The global opportunity is clear. “India’s next big leap will come from shifting towards processed, residue-compliant, traceable, and climate-smart agri-exports rather than relying mainly on bulk commodity shipments,” says Abhishek Dev, Chairman of Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA). “The agri sector needs a unified national framework, science-based standards, and simplified licensing to enable innovation in high-value micronutrients and specialty fertilisers. Streamlined regulation will accelerate advanced nutrition technologies, strengthen soil health, and unlock productivity and profitability gains essential for truly transformative agricultural reform.”  — Dr. Rahul Mirchandani, President, IMMA  Value addition must become central to India’s strategy, particularly in crops like sugarcane. “Exports of sugar quota have to be restricted to further increase production of alcohol for oil substitution. Value addition is the key. Targets of 20 per cent plus substitution have to be the new target for easing some oil dollars. The money thus freed up can be used to improve irrigation, research, and perfecting models which are customised for Indian agriculture,” adds Sandeepa. Circularity, too, must become integral. Krishna Mohan Puvvada, Regional President, (Middle East, India and Africa), Novonesis stresses, “Adequate support must be provided for harnessing the waste-to-wealth potential in agriculture, including robust logistics for storage and transportation of agricultural waste feedstocks that can be transformed into fertilizers and bioenergy.” “A direct benefit transfer model for fertilisers—sold at full cost with farmers claiming subsidy via POS authentication—can be a game-changer. It ensures manufacturers receive full value, the government gains full GST, markets maintain adequate supply, leakages and black-marketing are curbed, and subsidy outlay reflects actual use. Budget 2026 should prioritise this transparent, efficient reform.” – Vinod Goyal, CEO, Agricare Corporation Domestic market architecture requires equal attention. Dr Ashok Dalwai, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) and Chairman, Karnataka Agriculture Price Commission, notes, “Targeted support for FPOs, agri-startups, and interoperable e-market platforms can cut post-harvest losses, stabilise prices, and make climate risk more manageable for smallholders.” Institutional strengthening, he stresses, is vital for farmers to remain competitive amid market volatility. Budget 2026, therefore, must reimagine subsidies, shifting from input-centric to outcome-centric frameworks. “Water, soil and climate must be planned as one ecosystem. Budget 2026 should institutionalise watershed-scale irrigation planning, incentivise soil regeneration, and embed climate-risk analytics into district planning. This is not sustainability for compliance; it is sustainability for survival,” says Srinivas.  “Budget 2026 can back a flagship ‘Sulphur- and Potash-Secure India’ initiative that promotes sulphate-based potash and balanced secondary nutrients, improving taste, colour, shelf-life and exportability of fruits, vegetables and plantation crops while reducing import vulnerability.”--Dr. Manish Singh, AVP-Technical & Marketing, Transworld Furtichem Limited “For a water-starved nation like India, drip should be made compulsory. This would conserve soils along with improving the area of irrigation. The river-joining project must have allocation for short, medium, and long term. Bonds must be raised to mobilise domestic and World Bank funds,” adds Sandeepa. Structural gaps in specialised inputs also demand urgent attention. Dr Rahul Mirchandani, President, Indian Micro-Fertilizers Manufacturers Association (IMMA) observes, “India’s agricultural ecosystem is at an inflection point, yet not structurally prepared for large-scale reforms. One major gap lies in the micronutrients and specialty fertilizer industry, which remains outside mainstream policy despite its direct link to soil health, crop quality, and farmer income. Fragmented licensing under FCO, uneven state compliance frameworks, and the absence of a unified national policy slow innovation, restrict ease of doing business, and prevent rapid scale-up of advanced nutrition technologies like chelates, water-soluble fertilizers, and fortified micronutrient blends.”  “Budget 2026 must anchor a long-term Viksit Bharat Kheti Vision 2047 by reforming fertiliser use. Mandating a 25:15:5 co-pack of chemical, organic and biofertilisers—and supporting OF/BF manufacturing through PLI—can strengthen soil health, raise nutrient-use efficiency, expand acreage coverage and build climate-resilient productivity. It is time subsidies drive transformation, not perpetuate inefficiency ” --- Sandeepa Kanitkar, Chairman of BASAI and Managing Director of Kan Biosys Dr Singh underscores the strategic imperative: “Budget 2026 can back a flagship ‘Sulphur- and Potash-Secure India’ initiative that promotes sulphate-based potash and balanced secondary nutrients, improving taste, colour, shelf-life, and exportability of fruits, vegetables, and plantation crops while reducing import vulnerability.” Complementing this, Vinod Goyal, CEO, Agricare Corporation advocates a pragmatic DBT-based reform: “Fertilizers shall be sold on full cost price at dealer shops—farmers register purchases on a Point of Sale (POS) machine at the time of pick-up, and subsidies are directly transferred to their bank accounts.”  “Budget 2026 must treat water, soil and climate as one ecosystem by institutionalizing watershed-scale irrigation, incentivising soil regeneration and embedding climate-risk analytics in district planning. Equally critical is a legally robust Digital Land Ledger, interoperable with crop and credit data, to unlock formal finance, insurance and market access for millions of farmers still excluded from the system ” — Kuchibhotla Srinivas, Partner, Deloitte Sandeepa adds, “Chemical fertilizers should be bundled with organic and biofertilisers—25 kg of CF, 15 kg of OF, and 5 kg of BF per bag. This allows fertilizer to cover 30 per cent more land with improved use efficiency. Organic and biofertilizer industries can be supported through PLI schemes to attract private investment, improve soils, and build climate resilience.” As multiple industry leaders emphasise, this reform will determine whether Indian agriculture can truly align with the aspirations of Viksit Bharat 2047, delivering prosperity, sustainability, and global competitiveness for generations to come. Tech, Traceability, and Transformation: Budget 2026’s Agri-Vision Budget 2026 is not merely a fiscal exercise—it represents a strategic inflection point for Indian agriculture, an opportunity to pivot from incremental measures to transformative, technology-driven reforms.  “Agri-drones are no longer a novelty; they are an important part of the agritech landscape. Subsidies, public-private partnership models, and targeted R&D incentives can accelerate manufacturing and deployment, creating rural employment while increasing productivity. We must also potentially look at integrating drone data with national agricultural databases to enable smarter crop planning, soil monitoring, and weather resilience strategies,” says Agnishwar Jayaprakash, Founder and CEO of Garuda Aerospace. “ Fertiliser purchases must be linked to a unified Digital Farm ID, which allows tracking of nutrient use efficiency, preventing over-application and enabling customised advisory. It builds India’s first data-driven nutrient intelligence system’’ --- Yogesh Chandra, VP-Sales & Marketing, Transworld Furtichem Limited Echoing this vision, Soundararadjane, stresses that Budget 2026 should introduce a Digital Farming Acceleration Subsidy—shifting support from traditional inputs to IoT and automation tools such as soil moisture sensors, disease-warning IoT nodes, digital soil intelligence kits, smart irrigation systems, automated grading and sorting units, and low-cost climate stations for cold stores. “A 40–60 per cent capital subsidy will democratise access and unlock predictive, precision farming at scale,” he asserts. Equally critical is the foundation of clear land rights and reliable credit. “When a farmer has clear land ownership and predictable finance, they can finally shift from reactive decisions to planned, technology-led farming,” observes Ankur.  “Budget 2026 must accelerate digital land records and frictionless credit so farmers can plan, invest and adopt modern crop protection responsibly. To compete in global markets, India’s supply chains need embedded traceability, quality assurance and sustainable input use. Strategic public–private collaboration can fast-track safe pesticide practices, surveillance systems and next-generation, environmentally responsible formulations ” — Ankur Aggarwal, Executive Chairman, Crystal Crop Protection Srinivas adds, “The Budget should focus on the two biggest unlocks for farmer prosperity: clean digital land records and frictionless credit. A legally robust Digital Land Ledger, interoperable with crop data and credit scoring, can unlock formal finance, insurance, and market contracts for millions of farmers currently outside the system.” The systemic importance of logistics and digital marketplaces is reinforced by Sanjiv Puri, Managing Director, ITC Ltd: “To truly raise farm incomes, storage, grading, logistics, and digital marketplaces must be treated as core agricultural infrastructure, not peripheral add-ons.”  “Budget 2026 should launch a National Potato Innovation Mission to transform India into a globally competitive processing potato hub. A strong public–private R&D partnership must fast-track CRISPR-based climate-resilient varieties, AI-driven breeding, drone phenotyping, automated trials and True Potato Seeds. This science-led upgrade is essential for predictable supply, higher productivity and world-class processing quality.” – S. Soundararadjane, CEO of HyFarm Nutrient management, too, must be integrated. Yogesh Chandra, VP-Sales & Marketing, Transworld Furtichem Limited, explains, “Fertiliser purchases must be linked to a unified Digital Farm ID, allowing tracking of nutrient use efficiency, preventing over-application and enabling customised advisory. It builds India’s first data-driven nutrient intelligence system.” Budget 2026 must therefore deliver measurable, integrated reforms—embedding science, finance, technology, and policy into a unified, farmer-centric framework. It is the launchpad for the Viksit Bharat Kheti Vision 2047, enabling high-productivity, high-value, climate-smart agriculture and positioning India as a globally competitive agri-economy. ----- Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com) ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3483/from-ecological-fit-to-economic-proof-botswanas-safflower-strategy-redefines-dryland-resilience.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3483/from-ecological-fit-to-economic-proof-botswanas-safflower-strategy-redefines-dryland-resilience.html Fri, 19 Dec 2025 13:08:51 +0530 In an exclusive AgroSpectrum interview, Nnyaladzi Madzikigwa, Author and Director of Saffenergy Initiatives, Botswana, explains why safflower is emerging as a strategic resilience crop rather than a speculative diversification bet. Nnyaladzi argues that safflower’s real advantage lies in income stability, low input dependence, and multi-stream value creation—qualities that make it economically superior to high-yield but volatile dryland staples under climate stress. By rejecting bulk commodity markets and anchoring safflower in cooperative-owned processing, traceability, and ethical origin branding, Botswana is positioning the crop as an identity-based export for nutraceutical, cosmetic, and wellness markets. Crucially, the model integrates biodiversity stewardship, women- and youth-led ownership, and GBV-responsive livelihoods, reframing safflower not merely as an agronomic intervention but as a national strategy for climate resilience, social recovery, and rural economic sovereignty. From Ecological Fit to Economic Proof Botswana’s ecosystems have long demonstrated resilience under climatic stress—but resilience alone does not attract capital. What hard economic evidence (yield stability, cost curves, margin resilience) can demonstrate that safflower is not just climate-compatible, but commercially superior to traditional dryland staples under Botswana’s conditions ? Saffenergy Initiatives frames safflower not as a speculative diversification experiment, but as a deliberately chosen economic resilience instrument suited to Botswana’s dryland realities. Under arid and semi-arid conditions, the crop offers a rare combination of yield stability, low input intensity, and diversified revenue potential. Unlike traditional dryland staples that swing sharply with rainfall variability, safflower delivers predictable output even in stressed seasons. Its modest water, fertiliser, and pesticide requirements reduce production risk and protect farmer margins when climate shocks hit. Crucially, safflower’s value does not rest solely on seed yields: oil, cake, petals, and secondary by-products create multiple income streams. In cooperative pilots where safflower is integrated with poultry and mixed farming systems, household income volatility has fallen sharply. For Saffenergy, this stability—rather than peak agronomic performance—is what makes safflower economically compelling in Botswana’s climate context. Avoiding the Commodity Trap Many climate-resilient crops fail because they enter global markets as low-value commodities. How will Botswana position safflower not as another bulk oilseed, but as a differentiated, biodiversity-anchored product capable of sustaining premium pricing in global nutraceutical, cosmetic, and wellness markets? The strategy, Saffenergy argues, is to refuse participation in bulk oilseed markets altogether. Botswana’s opportunity lies in differentiation, not scale. Safflower is being positioned outside commodity pricing dynamics and anchored instead in biodiversity, climate resilience, and ethical production, including links to GBV recovery and livelihood reintegration programmes. The target markets are nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and wellness—segments where traceability, provenance, and ethical sourcing command premiums. By combining low-input dryland cultivation with cooperative-led traceability, social impact certification, and origin branding tied to ecosystem stewardship, Botswana safflower is repositioned from a price-taking commodity into an identity-based product. In this model, value is protected by trust and narrative, not by volume. Value Addition vs. Value Capture Local processing often creates jobs—but not necessarily wealth—if branding, IP, and market access remain offshore. Which segments of the safflower value chain (processing, formulation, branding, certification, IP) must remain in Botswana to ensure that rural communities capture value rather than merely supply raw inputs ? For communities to capture wealth rather than wages, Saffenergy insists that critical nodes of the value chain must remain in Botswana. These include primary processing such as oil pressing and cake production, downstream formulation for cosmetics, wellness blends, and animal feed, ownership of certification and traceability systems, brand control and storytelling, and intellectual property linked to formulations and indigenous knowledge. At Saffenergy, these functions are cooperative-owned by design. Export partners may handle distribution, but product identity, narrative authority, and margin capture remain local. This approach is not ideological, the organisation argues, but structural: Without control over these nodes, rural economies default to extractive models regardless of crop choice. Cooperatives as Export Vehicles, Not Welfare Structures Cooperatives frequently struggle with governance, quality control, and market discipline.What institutional design—governance rules, professional management, digital traceability, performance incentives—will allow Botswana’s safflower cooperatives to function as export-grade enterprises rather than subsistence collectives? Saffenergy’s answer is to design cooperatives as enterprises first and social instruments second. This means professional management rather than volunteer leadership, performance-linked incentives tied to quality and delivery, digital traceability from field to market, contractually enforced quality protocols, and a clear separation between social and commercial accounting. GBV and psychosocial support programmes operate alongside the cooperative, not within its governance framework, ensuring that empathy does not dilute market discipline. Export markets reward consistency and reliability, Saffenergy notes, and welfare logic cannot substitute for enterprise rigor. Competing in a Crowded Climate-Smart World Countries such as India, Ethiopia, and Kenya are already advancing biodiversity-linked crops into global markets. What is Botswana’s unique competitive moat—ecological, reputational, regulatory, or branding-based—that prevents safflower from becoming a race to the bottom on price? Botswana’s advantage, according to Saffenergy, is credibility rather than scale. The country brings a global reputation for good governance, clean landscapes with low chemical intensity, high trust in regulatory systems, and a compelling ethical production narrative. When these attributes are combined with biodiversity stewardship and GBV-responsive rural development, safflower becomes more than a crop—it becomes a trusted origin. That trust underpins premium pricing and shields producers from the race-to-the-bottom dynamics that have hollowed out many commodity sectors. Scaling Without Ecological Degradation History shows that scaling “green” crops can unintentionally replicate extractive agricultural models.How will Botswana ensure that safflower expansion strengthens soil health, water efficiency, and biodiversity rather than simplifying landscapes and recreating monoculture risks? Scaling, Saffenergy emphasises, does not mean monoculture expansion. Safflower’s resilience allows growth without ecological overreach when embedded within integrated farming systems, crop rotation regimes that regenerate soils, water-efficient dryland irrigation practices, and intercropping and fallow restoration strategies. Because income is diversified across by-products and poultry integration, farmers are not pressured to continuously expand acreage. In this model, ecological health is treated as an economic asset rather than an externality to be managed after the fact. Gender, Youth, and the Political Economy of Rural Jobs Rural agro-enterprises often promise inclusion but deliver uneven outcomes. How will safflower-based rural industries be structured to ensure meaningful participation and income security for women and youth—beyond seasonal labor or informal processing roles? Women and youth inclusion is positioned as central rather than ancillary. Saffenergy’s GBV-focused social programme provides psychosocial support for survivors, reintegration pathways into productive livelihoods, and skills training directly linked to income streams. Women and youth participate as cooperative shareholders, operators of processing units, and entrepreneurs in poultry and by-product enterprises. The emphasis is on continuous, year-round income rather than seasonal labour, with ownership replacing dependency. Economic agency, Saffenergy argues, is among the most effective tools for both GBV prevention and recovery. From Pilot Crop to National Strategy Many promising crops remain trapped in pilot mode due to fragmented policy support. What specific policy levers—procurement incentives, export facilitation, blended finance, certification subsidies—must Botswana activate to move safflower from a niche biodiversity project to a nationally scalable export strategy? To transition safflower from pilot projects to a national strategy, Saffenergy identifies five policy levers: public procurement of safflower oil and by-products, blended finance for rural processing hubs, certification subsidies for cooperatives, export facilitation for niche biodiversity products, and formal recognition of biodiversity crops within national agricultural policy. Above all, safflower must be framed not as a narrow crop intervention, but as a climate resilience, gender inclusion, and rural stability strategy. In Saffenergy’s framing, safflower is ultimately not just about farming—it is about restoring dignity, rebuilding resilience after trauma, and creating rural economies capable of healing both people and land. --- Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com) ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3428/can-africa-grow-what-it-eats-irris-dr-ismail-maps-new-blueprint-for-rice-self-sufficiency.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3428/can-africa-grow-what-it-eats-irris-dr-ismail-maps-new-blueprint-for-rice-self-sufficiency.html Thu, 27 Nov 2025 18:04:57 +0530 In an exclusive AgroSpectrum interview, Dr. Ismail Abdelbagi, Principal Scientist and Regional Representative for Africa at International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) lays out a candid assessment of why Africa still imports $8–9 billion of rice annually despite holding the world’s largest reserve of untapped arable land. He argues that the continent’s core bottlenecks—underfunded seed systems, broken value chains, low government investment, and dominance of rainfed, low-productivity systems—must be fixed before any talk of self-sufficiency becomes realistic. Breakthroughs in drought, flood, salinity, and heat-tolerant varieties are finally progressing, but require African-specific breeding pipelines, stronger national programs, and serious funding to reach scale. With consumers shifting toward higher-quality, fortified and convenience rice, Dr. Ismail points to milling modernization, youth-led mechanisation services, and private-sector seed systems as Africa’s next billion-dollar opportunities. Looking ahead to 2035, he says Africa can be food-sovereign and even a net exporter—but only if political stability, modernized policies, and investment-ready ecosystems align to unlock the continent’s true rice potential. Africa’s rice imports have crossed $8–9 billion annually, despite strong policy rhetoric on self-sufficiency. Which structural weaknesses—seed systems, milling capacity, land productivity, or trade dependence—are most urgent to fix, and what would be the fastest win ? Africa has the potential to feed itself and even contribute substantially to global food production and security. The continent holds about 60 to 65 per cent of the global arable lands that has not yet been exploited, with diverse climates suitable for various crops. These vastly underutilized resources position the continent as a future safety valve for global food security. Several general issues are contributing to the inadequate use of these resources such as limited investment in infrastructure including irrigation, modern production and postharvest technologies and marketing platforms.   Several challenges need to be addressed to unlock this potential for the continent to effectively contribute to local and global food security. Governments’ investment in agriculture is still low compared with countries in Asia, mostly less than 1 per cent of their respective GDPs. This is despite the commitment to allocate at least 10 per cent of national GDP to agriculture and rural development, based on Maputo Declaration endorsed by all states in July 2003. Committing to invest in agriculture, including production, postharvest and marketing infrastructure, enabling policy frameworks, providing training and capacity building, and minimizing risks especially for smallholder communities will boost productivity and address food, nutrition and income security, and ensure food sovereignty to avoid dependence on imports in the increasingly becoming less reliable international food market trade. Rice lands and water resources are abundant in Africa, with an estimate of over 300 million ha suitable for rice production, with only about 12 per cent of it currently in use, with low productivity averaging less than half of the world mean production. This is because of dominance of traditional farming approaches, especially in rainfed farming systems that constitutes about 80 per cent of the current rice production areas. Implementing proper policy frameworks that support rapid growth of the rice sector, including adoption of new varieties and modern production practices such as mechanization, effective seed production and delivery systems, access to markets for smallholder farmers (SHFs) to vend their produce at prices that ensures sufficient profits and sustained income, and access to agrochemicals including fertilizers at affordable prices and in time. For this to be realized, rice-based value chains need considerable amendments to reduce intermediaries and provide access of farmers to competitive markets for better choices of prices and to motivate them to produce more. Consolidation of SHF into large fields managed through farmers’ cooperatives and communities will also facilitate implementation of efficient, scale-appropriate technologies to replace the current mostly manual and inefficient production methods being used by smallholders.    Engaging the private sector and other investors is critical for the success of rice-based systems in Africa for effective commercialization of new varieties, development of sustained seed systems and for market access. Intergovernmental arrangements and guidelines are mostly in place but largely not implemented, these agreements can help reduce dependence on import through regional and continental food security and sovereignty. Africa also deserve stronger and binding trade agreements independent of global food and trade instability, although this trade dependence is in part, a result of low production and poor quality of the produce, to meet local requirements. This is further aggravated by political instability and security leading to conflicting investment priorities. Climate shocks are hitting rice hardest in rainfed lowlands, where 80 per cent of Africa’s farmers operate. How close are we to a breakthrough in drought- and heat-resilient varieties that can stabilize yields without costly irrigation infrastructure ? Rainfed rice areas in Africa has not been given sufficient attention for rice production, and farmers still use traditional tools and technologies. This is contrary to the progress made in Asia, where most rainfed areas has been transformed into productive lands, with high and mostly stable yields. The transformation in Asia became feasible after the introduction of varieties that tolerate drought, floods and salt stress, both in coastal and inland areas. This is also coupled with modern production technologies, including water management, proper use of fertilizers, mechanized farming and other suitable cultural practices, with considerable success in increasing and sustaining productivity and income of SHFs in affected areas. Sub-Saharan Africa benefitted little from the stress tolerant varieties developed for South and Southeast Asia, and obviously more efforts need to be devoted to developing and delivering such varieties for Africa to help cope with the vastly worsening climate change adversities. This is only possible through dedicated and well-funded projects to ensure faster progress and impact, especially with the recent scientific developments and use of modern breeding strategies, including molecular tools for genotyping coupled with efficient phenotyping approaches using speed breeding facilities. IRRI started using these technologies in its centralized breeding facilities in Philippines and India, with the products targeting African environment being tested locally in African countries. We are expecting some good progress in the coming few years if resources permit.    IRRI’s Sub1 and salinity-tolerant varieties changed the game in Asia. What are the next frontier traits that Africa needs—especially along the Sahelian dry corridor and coastal deltas facing salinization from sea-level rise? Rice farmers in Africa are facing numerous challenges, including the same issues in Asia – drought, floods and excess salts in soil and water. Besides, other abiotic stresses like iron toxicity in lowlands and nutrient deficiencies due to soil conditions, like phosphorus and zinc deficiencies in uplands, are also serious in some areas. The soils are degraded and deficient in minerals and organic carbon due to continued mining with little replacement. Moreover, the unusual variation in temperatures being experienced, is also leading to considerable reduction in yields, with higher temperatures in some lowland areas and chilling temperatures in highlands. The dominant stains of common rice diseases are sometimes different from those dominating in Asia, making breeding stress tolerant varieties even more challenging.  For these reasons, the stress tolerant varieties released in Asia that made considerable contributions in increasing and sustaining productivity in some countries, like drought, flood and salt tolerant varieties, mostly do not work in Africa, due to variation in other factors, especially diseases and pests and soil conditions. This necessitates transfer of tolerance traits and genes into genetic backgrounds suitable for Africa, and significant efforts and resources need to be devoted to developing such varieties. Due to these and other factors, particularly lack of resources and breeding infrastructure for national breeding programs, our work on developing stress tolerant varieties for Africa has been slow.  The genetic factors responsible for tolerance of drought, floods, salinity and their combinations need to be transferred into varieties suitable for African climate conditions while meeting the consumer and local market requirements and preferences, before they can successfully be commercialized and adopted. This work has been ongoing with some success in releasing few flood-tolerant varieties (with SUB1 gene) in Nigeria and Madagascar, and salt tolerant varieties in Kenya and Tanzania. Some varieties with partial tolerance to drought were released in several countries across SSA. Work is also ongoing to develop varieties that tolerate temperature extremes, where heat waves are becoming common during the season in lowlands and low temperatures in highlands. Ideally, future varieties for Africa should combine tolerance of major abiotic stresses dominating in a particular target region, together with resistance to common diseases. Today’s African consumer is shifting from low-cost staples to quality, fortified, and convenience-driven rice. What innovations in processing, branding, and nutrition could unlock the next billion-dollar opportunity for domestic producers ? Rice is becoming the cereal food of choice in SSA, over the traditional coarse grains like sorghum, millets and teff, because of its palatability, ease of preparation and storage. This shift is driven by several demographic changes, including rapid population growth, with currently over 60 per cent of the population being young, below 25 yrs of age, with shifts in food preferences and conveniences. There is also an exodus of youth to urban areas, seeking better living conditions and opportunities, leaving older generations to deal with farming. This situation can be effectively reversed by providing attractive entrepreneurships through rice farming, such as service provision, especially mechanization, transport and storage, use of IT tools and Apps, seed production and marketing, etc., to make farming more attractive for younger generations. Enabling and supporting such enterprises for young men and women will significantly help in improving productivity and reducing cost of production, while providing employment opportunities for younger generations to stay on farms, reducing pressure on already struggling cities. Similarly, this is opening opportunities for investors and private sector to engage in support provision and even commercial production and marketing. Apparently, all steps along the value chain provide an investment opportunity in most countries. Rice produced locally is not yet competitive with imported rice in most countries, and that is because of many factors, including use of old varieties, poor seed systems to deliver new, improved and high-quality products, poor post-harvest and storage management. Modernizing rice production, including use of quality seeds and sufficient agrochemicals, as well as upgrading the whole value chain, especially postharvest (drying, cleaning, milling, packaging, storage, transport and marketing) will go a long way to make locally produced rice comparable with imported rice, which consumers prefer, especially in urban areas. Subsequently, this will provide good opportunities for investments in Africa. India, for example, could play major roles through bilateral engagements like the existing lines of credit for some countries and through South-South Cooperation and trade agreements. SSA countries can learn a lot from India, through its impressively short journey from being a net importer of rice to the largest exporter in the world within couple of decades. This also provide lots of opportunities for private sector to invest in these value chains, particularly commercial seed production, mechanization and all aspects of post-harvest management. SSA also need to build abilities and investments to adopt climate friendly operations with the expansion of rice industry, and to avoid the issues being experienced in major rice producing countries. The most obvious is the straw and husks burning under intensive rice production systems, involving 2-3 seasons per year, leaving little time to deal with solid wastes. Value addition and processing of these solid wastes can generate more income, e.g. biochar to enrich soil carbon, use in cement industry, mushroom farming, and processed fodder for livestock. Industries involving various products and value addition using rice can also help generate opportunities for commerce and for income. Fragmented national markets raise cost across the value chain. With AfCFTA slowly accelerating, which cross-border rice corridors (e.g., Senegal–Mali, Nigeria–Niger) could emerge as competitive agro-industrial hubs by 2035 ? Most of the intraregional trade in rice and other food commodities in SSA are informal and not well organized to reach their conceivable targets, leading to such fragmented and broken value chains and markets. However, if well-structured and regulated, can play major roles in reducing transaction costs, especially the cost of transport, and could help in resolving issues associated with other non-tariff barriers to encourage and support investments. Several countries in SSA succeeded in substantially increasing their annual rice production and some of them started trading with their neighboring countries. These countries include Tanzania, Madagascar, Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Ivory Coast. These countries are also exporting rice to their neighboring countries through mostly informal means. Countries that already achieved self-sufficiency, like Tanzania will likely contribute substantially to its neighbors like Kenya and Uganda. If AI-based advisories, digital extension, and climate risk insurance can reduce production uncertainty, what would it take to mainstream data-led farming among smallholders—technology subsidies, telco partnerships, or new farmer-business models ? AI-based advisories, extension apps and climate risk insurance models are important tools that can help speed generation of relevant information, reaching to extension personnel and farmers and minimizing farmers risks by providing insurance against disastrous incidents. AI proved to be transformative in making difficult technologies accessible and convenient and is becoming increasingly useful in agriculture and environment research. Yet its fast and predictive power raises concerns over the likely risks of its use to benefit SHFs, despite its power to speed generating scientific knowledge for the public.   AI already proved its effectiveness in managing commercial farms in developed countries, and similarly could be adapted to farmers needs in SSA, to support decision making based on legacy data, which will considerably reduce investments and time to come up with bundles of interventions fitting specific local contexts, including forecast of catastrophic incidences, like droughts and floods, disease and pests outbreaks that are becoming more frequent with climate change progression. Climate risk insurance is also being accessed by farmers in Asia. Both AI and climate insurance has not been implemented to any scale in SSA to benefit SHFs, providing good business opportunities and new models for farming and food production. However, digital tools in the form of Apps provided through smart phones are being used by extension personnel and even farmers for training and access to information, including input and output market intelligence, nutrient and water management and for managing and forecasting yields, disease incidences etc.; and are likely to be mainstreamed faster than other digital farming technologies in SSA. The use of these tools, however, need to be carefully assessed and regulated to avoid any risks to farmers due to lack of awareness and capacity or due to risks associated with the technology. This is mainly because SHFs have very little resources to avert any incurred risks caused by erroneous or biased data used to generate such models. There are several ethical risks associated with these data-led tools, especially with AI, which has not been rigorously tested and regulated in Africa, including risks associated with data accuracy, availability and privacy, potential loss of jobs and displacement, biased access to information leading to unequal benefits, “digital divide” based on accessibility, etc. Strict ethical frameworks and transparency need to be in place to protect SHFs and reduce their vulnerability. Similarly, crop insurance requires strict guidelines and assessment to ensure accuracy of information and credibility of claims, which in most cases will be outside SHF‘s capacity. Government-led programs equipped with proper monitoring and data collection is necessary for the success of these advisory and support tools, for them to be successfully deployed in Africa, to mainstream data-led farming.  Africa also lacks an effective geospatial system for instantaneous generation of information on potential climate-related disasters, an area that will require infrastructure investment and training. This is critical to provide both farmers and governments with early warnings and to guide decisions that help mitigate any negative consequences. Successful use of these ventures will also require substantial investments in infrastructure and support services, which opens considerable opportunities for investors. Looking ahead to 2035: what does a climate-secure and investment-ready African rice ecosystem look like—and what is the single hardest political or economic barrier standing in its way ? Provided resources and stability within the coming ten years, I expect several countries in Africa to accomplish food self-sufficiency, and some become net exporters of various food staples, including rice. This will likely lead to continental food sovereignty and less dependence on the currently fragile international trade markets, especially exposure to price shocks that become inevitably frequent due to several triggers such as weather calamities, conflicts and political unrests, leading to panic hoarding in some cases. I believe reaching self-sufficiency will depend on how fast countries and regions make progress in critical areas that are currently holding them back, including the following: Significant and consistent government’s investment in food production and related infrastructure for processing, storage and transport. This should include provision of insurance and subsidy options to derisk and protect smallholder farmers, and to provide minimum farmgate prices to sustain farmers’ income and profit and keep them in the market. Fixing and strengthening rice value chains: Currently SHFs in Africa are getting less than half of the proceeds their counterparts are getting in Asia. This is mainly because the existing value chains are broken, mostly unregulated and dominated by intermediaries. Political stability is critical for sound progress and development of the rice agri-food systems. Fortunately, most countries are moving in that direction. This will encourage investors to take critical roles in financing to revolutionize the food value chains, including rice where relatively little is available in international trade market, and with increasing global demands.   Adjusting policies and guidelines to match those in other successful countries like India, to streamline the development and deployment of innovations faster. Current policies in most countries are outdated and are hindering progress, especially those related to release and scaling of new varieties, delivery systems for quality inputs and outputs, and for engaging private sector and investors to provide needed capital and capacity. This is probably the hardest political and economic barrier standing in the way of SSA to be investment ready and to assume its proper role as global food provider. Some countries are already making strides in this direction. Implementation of national and regional strategies that support growth of the rice sector: All major rice producing countries and few regional economic communities in SSA developed their national and regional rice development strategies that detailed the way to achieve their intended targets by 2030, these strategies are yet to be effectively implemented. The regional Economic Communities (RECs: EAC, ECOWAS, IGAD, COMESA, SADC) and the Associated Regional Agricultural Research Networks (e.g. CORAF, ASARECA, CCARDESA) also developed policies that assure and regulate collaboration across borders of neighboring countries, within regions and at the continental scales to allow free adoption of varieties released in a particular country, free cross-border movement of seeds, grains, agrochemicals and knowledge, with no non-tariff barriers. Engaging with countries in Asia through South-South Collaboration (SSC) is also being discussed to enhance learning and exchange, and to facilitate investments for faster growth. An example in this direction is the “Seed Without Borders (SWB) agreement facilitated by IRRI. Most countries in Africa already set policies and guidelines that encourages investments in agriculture and food production, others are on the way. There are dire needs for these investments, especially in upgrading infrastructure, facilitating aggregation of SHFs into commercial entities, provision of modern technologies particularly machinery, agrochemicals and marketing platforms --- Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com) ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3379/clearleafs-gotablanca-demonstrates-superior-performance-in-cornell-university-apple-and-grape-trials.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3379/clearleafs-gotablanca-demonstrates-superior-performance-in-cornell-university-apple-and-grape-trials.html Fri, 07 Nov 2025 15:24:50 +0530 Comprehensive trials carried out by Cornell AgriTech confirm that GotaBlanca delivers excellent pathogen control, matching or exceeding conventional treatments in apples and grapes ClearLeaf, a Costa Rican company with proven success in formulating non-toxic agricultural products for crop protection, today announced that its GotaBlanca fungicide and bactericide proved highly effective in controlling pathogens in grapes and apples in field trials conducted by Cornell University’s Cornell AgriTech. The apple and grape field trials demonstrated that ClearLeaf's flagship product matched or outperformed currently recommended products in controlling both fungal and bacterial diseases, with its favorable safety profile for crops and the environment. In the apple trials, GotaBlanca achieved fire blight, scab, and powdery mildew disease control that significantly outperformed incumbents, including streptomycin antibiotics, which have been banned in organic production since 2014. This positions GotaBlanca as a viable organic-compatible alternative. When used in rotation programs, GotaBlanca matched or exceeded complex conventional programs while maintaining excellent crop health, with no damage or stress to plants across all applications. In the grape trials, GotaBlanca treatment in single product applications achieved excellent severity control of downy mildew and black rot, surpassing the grower standard. Rotation strategies boosted control even further, exceeding conventional programs by achieving superior control without the need for complex mixtures of synthetic crop protection products. Dr. Kerik Cox at Cornell AgriTech noted: "The apple trials provided valuable insights into GotaBlanca's potential as an alternative to conventional disease management strategies. In our fire blight trials, GotaBlanca achieved control levels of 90 per cent or greater for both blossom and shoot blight, significantly outperforming streptomycin antibiotics—results that are particularly relevant given the increasing restrictions on agricultural antibiotic use. What stood out was the performance in rotation programs for scab and powdery mildew, where it matched or exceeded complex conventional programs while maintaining excellent crop health. The absence of phytotoxicity across all apple applications represents a meaningful advantage for growers." Dr. Katie Gold and Dave Combs in the Grape Sensing, Pathology, and Extension Laboratory at Cornell AgriTech, commented: "Our grape trials evaluated GotaBlanca across four major disease pressures, and the results demonstrate its versatility as both a standalone treatment and rotation partner. For downy mildew, GotaBlanca alone achieved 86 per cent severity control on clusters, surpassing our grower standard, with rotation strategies pushing control above 89 per cent.  The black rot trials were particularly interesting—GotaBlanca rotated with biologicals provided equivalent cluster incidence control to the grower standard (systemic synthetic fungicide), which is impressive given the pressure in our trials is incredibly high. What makes these findings significant is that GotaBlanca can deliver this level of control across multiple diseases and grape varieties, while offering flexible integration into existing IPM programs and supporting sustainable viticulture practices.” Dr. Agustín Büchert, CSO and Co-founder of ClearLeaf, remarked: "These comprehensive Cornell trials represent a milestone in validating what we've observed across dozens of controlled experiments and with our grower customers in Latin America— effective, broad-spectrum crop protection doesn't require a compromise between performance and safety. Significantly, GotaBlanca as a single standalone product matched or exceeded the control levels achieved by applications involving multiple conventional products. This translates directly into cost savings for farmers—they can achieve superior disease control with fewer products instead of purchasing and tank-mixing multiple products at each application, while also reducing chemical loads. Combined with zero phytotoxicity, superior crop health metrics, and in several cases better yields than conventional treatments, GotaBlanca delivers both economic and agronomic advantages. For farmers navigating increasing restrictions on antibiotics and synthetic fungicides, GotaBlanca offers a path forward that doesn't sacrifice disease control or profitability." GotaBlanca is currently registered for use or sale in select international markets.  GotaBlanca is not currently registered for use or sale in the U.S., a U.S. EPA registration is planned.  GotaBlanca stands out as a broad-spectrum fungi-bactericide with a favorable safety profile for crops and the environment, It does not cause microbial resistance, enhances plant growth, aligns with regenerative agriculture practices, and can be applied at any stage of the growing cycle. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3374/role-of-mancozeb-in-safeguarding-grapes-global-food-security.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3374/role-of-mancozeb-in-safeguarding-grapes-global-food-security.html Thu, 06 Nov 2025 12:33:57 +0530 The agriculture sector, known for its high-value fruits and significant export potential, is facing a convergence of agronomic, economic, and regulatory pressures. On October 13, a distinguished panel of scientists, industry leaders, and regulatory experts convened virtually to discuss the multifaceted role of Mancozeb in sustainable agriculture, in Agrospectrum webinar titled - The Future of Mancozeb: Science, Stewardship, and Global Food Security. The webinar examined the fungicide’s scientific attributes, its integration into disease management programs, regulatory trends, and its broader implications for farm profitability and food security.  The virtually held discussions underscored that fungicide stewardship is no longer merely a technical matter; it is intricately linked to growers’ livelihoods, market access, and global food stability.  Economic Lessons from Disease Modeling The session commenced with a presentation by Dr Kaushik Banerjee, FRSC, FNAAS, Director of ICAR-NRC for Grapes and Honorary Professor at Queen's University Belfast and the University of Laval, Canada. Dr Banerjee framed the discussion by highlighting the economic and systemic impacts of grape disease outbreaks. Using advanced agronomic modeling, he demonstrated that fungal infections, particularly under high-pressure disease scenarios, can trigger cascading effects on farm profitability, regional supply chains, and even international markets. His analysis emphasised that targeted fungicide programs, including those employing Mancozeb, are not merely preventive measures at the field level but essential tools for stabilising grower income and maintaining global food security. "Every outbreak of grape disease is not just a threat to individual farms—it sends shockwaves through regional supply chains, export markets, and farmer livelihoods. Strategic fungicide programs, including judicious use of Mancozeb, are critical investments. Timely, science-driven interventions safeguard yields, stabilize income, and ensure that agriculture continues to feed both people and economies sustainably." – Dr Kaushik Banerjee, FRSC, FNAAS, Director of ICAR-NRC for Grapes and Honorary Professor at Queen's University Belfast and the University of Laval, Canada Dr Banerjee illustrated that under certain high-incidence conditions, the absence of an effective fungicide program could result in yield losses exceeding 30 to 40 percent, with downstream effects on pricing, processing capacity, and export viability. He stressed that investments in fungicide programs, though an upfront cost, are economically justified when considering the potential revenue losses avoided and the risk mitigation achieved.  Ensuring Safe Access to Mancozeb Worldwide Following Dr Banerjee’s presentation, the discussion shifted to regulatory science and risk assessment. Richard Mills, Global Director of Trade and Government Affairs at UPL, provided a comprehensive overview of the evolving global regulatory landscape for fungicides. Mills articulated the distinction between risk-based and hazard-based regulatory frameworks, emphasising that risk-based assessments evaluate the probability and impact of exposure under realistic use conditions, whereas hazard-based approaches may restrict chemicals based solely on intrinsic properties without contextual application data. He further elaborated on the importance of personal protective equipment compliance, residue monitoring, and data-driven stewardship programs to maintain both domestic and international access to Mancozeb. "Regulatory frameworks are only as effective as the practices behind them. Risk-based assessments let us evaluate real-world exposure, while hazard-based approaches can be overly restrictive. By combining compliance, PPE, residue monitoring, and proactive stewardship, we ensure safe, responsible use of Mancozeb, protecting both public health and growers’ market access across diverse international jurisdictions." –Richard Mills, Global Director of Trade and Government Affairs at UPL Mills highlighted that harmonizing regulatory compliance across countries is essential for exporters, as maximum residue limits (MRLs) vary widely across jurisdictions. He stressed that proactive engagement with regulators, transparent record-keeping, and adherence to recommended application practices are vital to safeguarding market access while ensuring public safety.  How Tech is Revolutionising Disease Control Building upon the regulatory perspective, Sandeep Jagtap, Senior Business Development Manager at Ross LifeScience, addressed the integration of Mancozeb into Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies and the role of digital agriculture. Jagtap elaborated on how precision tools, including digital disease forecasting models, remote monitoring platforms, and app-based advisory services, allow growers to optimise fungicide use, ensuring applications are timely and necessary, thereby minimizing both economic and environmental costs. He underscored that combining chemical interventions with cultural practices such as canopy management, crop rotation, and resistant varieties enhances the sustainability and effectiveness of disease control programs. "Integrating Mancozeb into IPM isn’t just about spraying—it’s about precision, timing, and sustainability. Digital tools like disease forecasting and remote monitoring help growers apply fungicides only when necessary, reducing costs and environmental impact. When combined with cultural practices like canopy management and resistant varieties, these strategies optimize yield, protect the ecosystem, and make viticulture smarter for every scale of farming." – Sandeep Jagtap, Senior Business Development Manager at Ross LifeScience By demonstrating case studies where digital tools helped reduce fungicide usage without compromising yield, Jagtap highlighted that technology adoption in viticulture can be scaled to support both large commercial growers and smaller farmers, providing actionable insights that translate into improved farm profitability and environmental stewardship.   Collaborative Approaches to Fungicide Stewardship Concluding the speaker presentations, Amiya Kumar Bartia, Strategic Marketing Head at Indofil, shared the industry’s perspective on stewardship and sustainable crop protection strategies. Bartia emphasized that ensuring responsible access to Mancozeb requires multi-level collaboration among growers, industry stakeholders, and regulators. He described initiatives such as educational outreach programs, grower training sessions, and digital monitoring tools that reinforce proper application practices and adherence to safety protocols. "Responsible access to Mancozeb demands collaboration across growers, industry, and regulators. Stewardship isn’t just compliance—it’s a strategic imperative. Through training, outreach, and digital monitoring, we ensure safe, effective application while safeguarding market continuity. By building trust and engagement, we balance crop protection, environmental responsibility, and social accountability, promoting sustainable practices in high-value horticulture." –Amiya Kumar Bartia, Strategic Marketing Head at Indofil Bartia noted that stewardship programs are not merely regulatory obligations but strategic imperatives that secure long-term market continuity and support sustainable agricultural systems. By fostering trust and engagement between stakeholders, the industry aims to balance crop protection needs with environmental and social responsibility, illustrating a pragmatic approach to chemical management in high-value horticulture. Following the formal presentations, the webinar hosted a dynamic Q&A session, providing participants an opportunity to engage directly with the expert panel. Key questions centered on practical challenges, including managing resistance to single-site fungicides, navigating divergent international MRLs, adopting digital forecasting tools, and understanding the cost-benefit dynamics of fungicide programs. In addressing resistance concerns, Dr Banerjee recommended adherence to rotation strategies and integration of multi-site fungicides like Mancozeb into IPM programs. Richard Mills responded to regulatory queries, emphasizing the necessity of maintaining meticulous residue records and proactively engaging with trade authorities to navigate changing international standards. When participants inquired about digital adoption among smallholder farmers, Sandeep Jagtap highlighted the scalability of mobile-based platforms and cloud-supported advisory services that enable data-driven decision-making even for resource-constrained growers. Dr Banerjee quantified the economic benefits of preventive fungicide programs, showing that costs incurred are substantially offset by avoided yield losses, revenue stabilization, and mitigation of downstream market risks. Finally, Bartia discussed the components of effective stewardship, including transparent application practices, grower partnerships, and continuous monitoring, which collectively ensure responsible fungicide use while safeguarding the environment. Several overarching themes emerged from the discussion. First, Mancozeb remains an indispensable tool in grape disease management, particularly in regions facing high disease pressure. Its multi-site activity not only provides immediate disease control but also preserves the efficacy of other fungicides, underpinning the sustainability of crop protection programs. Second, agronomic and economic modeling validates the cost-effectiveness of fungicide interventions, highlighting that upfront expenditure on well-planned programs mitigates larger financial risks from yield losses, quality deterioration, and compromised market access. Third, regulatory vigilance and proactive stewardship are crucial to ensuring safe, compliant access to fungicides in a rapidly evolving global trade environment. Fourth, the integration of digital agriculture and IPM enhances both efficacy and sustainability, enabling precision application, reducing environmental impact, and supporting data-driven farm management. Finally, collaborative industry frameworks, which align growers, regulatory bodies, and companies, are essential for maintaining market continuity, promoting responsible chemical use, and reinforcing sustainable agricultural practices. The webinar also underscored the broader implications of fungicide management beyond the vineyard. By mitigating disease losses and supporting yield stability, effective fungicide programs contribute to food security, particularly in regions dependent on horticultural exports for economic and nutritional resilience. In addition, the discussions highlighted that responsible fungicide stewardship intersects with environmental goals, including reduction of chemical overuse, protection of soil and water quality, and mitigation of pesticide resistance. As the agricultural sector navigates the dual pressures of climate variability and intensifying disease outbreaks, the integrated strategies discussed in this webinar offer a blueprint for sustainable crop protection. Participants and speakers alike noted that the convergence of scientific knowledge, regulatory compliance, economic modeling, and digital innovation is reshaping the landscape of viticulture. Mancozeb’s role, while sometimes viewed through the lens of regulatory scrutiny, remains pivotal in maintaining both productivity and market viability. The insights shared during the webinar demonstrate that strategic, data-driven approaches to fungicide use can yield multifaceted benefits, reinforcing economic resilience for growers, sustaining export markets, and protecting public health and the environment. The dialogue also highlighted the importance of ongoing education, capacity building, and collaboration among all stakeholders, as sustainable crop protection requires continuous adaptation to evolving challenges and opportunities. In conclusion, the Mancozeb stewardship webinar successfully illuminated the complex, interconnected dimensions of modern grape cultivation. The expert panel provided a comprehensive analysis of agronomic strategies, regulatory frameworks, digital innovations, and stewardship initiatives, offering actionable insights for growers, industry participants, and policymakers. The integration of scientific rigor, economic modeling, and regulatory understanding demonstrated that sustainable crop protection is achievable when multi-disciplinary approaches are applied thoughtfully and collaboratively. By emphasizing responsible fungicide use, digital integration, and stakeholder engagement, the webinar charted a pragmatic path forward for safeguarding grape yields, ensuring market access, and contributing to global food security. The discussions reaffirmed that effective disease management is not merely a technical endeavor but a critical component of resilient agricultural systems capable of meeting both economic and nutritional demands in a rapidly changing world. ---- Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com) ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3368/from-feed-grain-to-functional-food-brazil-turns-sorghum-into-gut-boosting-health-drink.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3368/from-feed-grain-to-functional-food-brazil-turns-sorghum-into-gut-boosting-health-drink.html Mon, 03 Nov 2025 13:46:23 +0530 In an exclusive conversation with AgroSpectrum, Professor Hercia Stampini Duarte Martino and her research team at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV) detailed their pioneering work on sorghum-based synbiotic beverages developed in collaboration with Embrapa and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The innovation combines whole-grain sorghum with Lacticaseibacillus paracasei to deliver metabolic benefits linked to obesity reduction, improved lipid profiles, and enhanced gut microbiota balance. The researchers emphasized strong translational potential for Brazil, noting the product’s alignment with public-health priorities and suitability for vegan and lactose-intolerant consumers. They highlighted commercialization opportunities within the fast-growing global plant-based market, while underscoring the need for broader consumer education and regulatory validation. Looking ahead, the team is advancing larger clinical studies, new probiotic strains, and metagenomic analyses to scale functional sorghum innovation from lab to marketplace. Innovation & Rationale Your team developed extruded whole-grain sorghum beverages with and without Lacticaseibacillus paracasei. What motivated Embrapa to explore non-dairy, plant-based synbiotic products, and how do they address current public health challenges related to obesity and metabolic health in Brazil ? The motivation was to address two strategic demands: first, to expand food alternatives for vegan and lactose-intolerant consumers seeking functional plant-based options; and second, to develop solutions utilizing Brazilian-adapted crops like sorghum, with relevant nutritional potential. The whole-grain sorghum provides dietary fibers, resistant starch, and phenolic compounds that modulate gut microbiota and aid in glycemic control. By combining it with the probiotic Lacticaseibacillus paracasei, we created a synbiotic product with a combined effect on satiety, insulin sensitivity, and low-grade inflammation. This innovation is aligned with obesity management policies, offering an accessible, sustainable, and culturally appropriate dietary intervention for the Brazilian population. Nutritional & Functional Insights The study highlights high levels of resistant starch, phenolic compounds, and antioxidants in the BRS 305 sorghum beverage. How do these bioactive compounds mechanistically contribute to improvements in visceral fat, lipid profiles, and overall cardiovascular risk markers, such as Castelli index I ? These components act via complementary mechanisms. Resistant Starch reaches the colon, where it is fermented into Short-Chain Fatty Acids (SCFAs) like butyrate and propionate. These metabolites improve insulin sensitivity, stimulate satiety hormones, reduce inflammation, and decrease visceral fat accumulation. Phenolic compounds and antioxidants protect against oxidative stress and the oxidation of LDL-cholesterol, a key factor in atherogenesis. This combination of actions favors the reduction of total cholesterol and LDL-c and can contribute to increased HDL functionality, resulting in a better total cholesterol/HDL-cholesterol ratio (Castelli Index I), a direct indicator of lower cardiovascular risk. Probiotic Synergy Could you elaborate on the interplay between the probiotic and the sorghum matrix, particularly how sorghum nutrients enhance probiotic viability and short-chain fatty acid production? Sorghum provides dietary fibers, resistant starch, and micronutrients that function as prebiotic substrates for Lacticaseibacillus paracasei and the resident microbiota. This nutritional environment favors the viability of probiotic during storage and passage through the gastrointestinal tract. The fermentation of these fibers intensifies the production of SCFAs, which potentiate the beneficial intestinal and metabolic effects. The result is a true synbiotic relationship: the sorghum protects and feeds the probiotic, and the probiotic maximizes the beneficial conversion of fermentable compounds naturally presents in the grain matrix. Clinical & Public Health Implications Given that this was a pilot study with 30 overweight and obese adults, how do you envision scaling these findings to broader populations? What role could sorghum-based synbiotic beverages play in national dietary guidelines or obesity prevention programs? The pilot study demonstrated safety and positive outcomes in overweight and obese individuals, although the sample size was limited. We are currently analyzing data from a subsequent study conducted with a larger number of individuals with overweight and obesity in order to validate the pilot findings. The next steps will likely involve larger, multicenter clinical trials that include more diverse population groups and long-term follow-up with robust clinical and metabolic endpoints. If the benefits are confirmed, sorghum-based synbiotic beverages could be incorporated into national healthy eating guidelines and implemented in schools, primary healthcare settings within the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), and obesity prevention initiatives, given that this technology is accessible, affordable, and readily scalable throughout Brazil. Market & Consumer Adoption Plant-based, non-dairy probiotics are gaining traction globally. From Embrapa’s perspective, what are the key opportunities and challenges for commercializing these sorghum beverages in Brazil and internationally, especially for vegan and lactose-intolerant populations? Opportunities are clear: the continuous growth of the plant-based market, driven by vegans, lactose-intolerant individuals, and health-conscious consumers. Sorghum adds nutritional value and sustainability. Challenges include ensuring sensory acceptance (taste/texture), achieving probiotic stability in non-dairy matrices, navigating functional claim regulations, and needing educational campaigns, as sorghum is still unfamiliar to many Brazilian consumers. Robust scientific proof and sustainability certifications can facilitate access to the international functional food market. Future Research & Technological Horizons Looking ahead, what are the next steps for Embrapa in optimizing sorghum-based functional foods? Are there plans to explore longer-term interventions, other probiotic strains, or potential impacts on gut microbiota diversity and metabolic health outcomes? Research will advance on several fronts: longer and multi-center clinical studies to assess sustained effects on weight control, lipids, and insulin. We will also explore new probiotic strains and technologies like microencapsulation to maximize bioactive compounds and probiotic viability. The metagenomic and metabolomic analyses will deepen the understanding of how the beverage modulates the gut microbiota diversity and function, including the role of the mycobiota, and its direct relation to the observed metabolic effects. Sustainability & Crop Valorization Sorghum is underutilized in Brazil for human consumption. How does this research contribute to crop valorization, climate-resilient agriculture, and the development of functional foods that are both nutritionally and environmentally sustainable? By developing a high-value product for human consumption, we are valorizing sorghum and creating a new market beyond animal feed, which is crucial for national food security. Sorghum is a drought-resistant and water-efficient crop, strengthening agricultural systems resilient to climate change. The use of whole-grain maximizes the uptake of dietary fibers and micronutrients while reducing the environmental footprint compared to animal-based inputs. This approach aligns with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 2 – Zero Hunger, SDG 3 – Good Health and Well-being, SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production, SDG 13 – Climate Action and SDG 15 – Life on Land; linking environmental sustainability, public health, and economic development. Translational Potential Beyond clinical markers, do you see potential for these beverages in sports nutrition, elderly care, or other specialized dietary applications? How might Embrapa collaborate with the private sector to accelerate innovation in plant-based functional foods? The product has potential in sports nutrition, offering gradual-release energy and recovery support via SCFAs, as well as in elderly care, aiding intestinal health and reducing chronic inflammation. It is also applicable in specific clinical diets requiring prebiotics and probiotics. To accelerate innovation in plant-based functional foods, Embrapa seeks private sector partnerships for technology licensing, industrial scale-up, functional certification, and sensory acceptance studies. Collaboration through Research and Development (R&D) consortia and technology transfer agreements is essential to ensure that scientific advances are effectively translated into accessible, commercially viable consumer products. --- Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com) ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3276/reishi-cordyceps-and-future-of-mycology-exclusive-with-dr-oli-genn-bash-on-smallholder-innovation-and-global-mushroom-markets.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3276/reishi-cordyceps-and-future-of-mycology-exclusive-with-dr-oli-genn-bash-on-smallholder-innovation-and-global-mushroom-markets.html Tue, 23 Sep 2025 16:20:11 +0530 In an exclusive Agrospectrum interview, Oli Genn-Bash, Founder of The Fungi Consultant and co-founder of the UKC Psychedelics Society, explored the rising wave of functional mushrooms as a high-value agricultural and wellness opportunity. He highlighted the potential for smallholder cultivation models, noting that with training, local spawn, and market access, species like Reishi and Cordyceps could thrive in Europe and Africa, particularly through circular substrate systems using agro-waste. Genn-Bash emphasized that quality control, traceability, and provenance labeling are becoming critical in premium European markets, while technology innovations such as solar-powered polyhouses could democratize cultivation in climate-stressed regions. On the consumer side, he traced the mushroom coffee phenomenon to post-pandemic health awareness, influencer culture, and functional beverage trends, forecasting consolidation by major FMCG players and growth in extracts, personalized supplements, and functional food products. Beyond consumption, he sees mushrooms as a bridge between cultural re-enchantment with nature and future innovations in myco-materials, adaptogen blends, and clinical applications, signaling a transformative horizon for fungal science. Medicinal Mushrooms from an Agricultural Point of View Mini Case Study Prompt: In India, several farmer cooperatives in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh are piloting Reishi and Cordyceps cultivation as a high-value crop, with margins reported at 2–3x those of traditional horticulture. How do you see this kind of smallholder model evolving in Europe or Africa? There's an opportunity for smallholder mushroom cultivation projects to scale where there’s a balance between suitable microclimates, reliable substrates, and access to training & markets, as well as furthering education to help prospective customers understand the benefits of these mushrooms. The key enablers would be low-cost spawn and training, potential for cooperatives to be set up, simple quality-control protocols, and tailored strains for local conditionsIn Europe the model would likely focus on supply chains and the quality of the final product (e.g. organic, dual extraction depending on the type of mushroom, lab testing to show bioactive compounds) sold to premium wellness and herbal markets. In Africa, the biggest upside is circularity and diversification: mushrooms can become an income layer on top of other commodities such as coffee, cocoa, or fruit and reduce seasonality risk. Mini Case Study Prompt: In Kenya, a social enterprise has partnered with coffee growers to use spent coffee grounds as substrate for Oyster and Reishi mushrooms, creating additional income for farmers and reducing waste. Could similar circular models be scaled globally? Circular substrate models create more sustainability and affordability for cultivation. Spent coffee has good nutrients and is often free; pairing it with agricultural waste (straw, sawdust) improves yields. Globally, scale depends on logistics: Collection systems, local inoculation units (so spawn doesn’t travel far), and end-market demand. Social enterprises can add community benefit layers (waste reduction, new income). Using spent coffee alone can be difficult due to how long it keeps for, so it’s ideal to combine with agricultural waste for prolonged use. This could be scaled strategically with local cultivation hubs and partnerships with hospitality/coffee chains for regular supply. Certification for food safety might be required to scale this on a global level Mini Case Study Prompt: China’s Fujian province has government-backed spawn labs that provide training, low-cost inoculum, and buyback guarantees to farmers. Could this “extension plus guaranteed market” model work in the UK or EU ? This could work but with some adaptation. The “extension + guaranteed market” model addresses two huge blockers: technical capacity and market risk. In the UK/EU, the model could be run by regional agricultural colleges, social enterprises, or cooperatives with public or philanthropic seed funding. The differences in the UK or EU would be that labour costs are higher, with stricter regulations on food safety and medical claims, as well as more restrictions regarding use of land in places like the UK. You would need to implement transparent quality standards, commercial-scale processing or extract partners to absorb volumes, and a hybrid funding model (public grants + small price differential for technical services). A buyback guarantee could focus initially on processed goods (dried mushrooms or extracts) where there is more scope to understand traceability and certify the quality standard. Mini Case Study Prompt: Researchers in Thailand have developed low-cost, solar-powered polyhouses for Cordyceps militaris cultivation, making it a viable option even in hotter climates. Could similar tech democratize medicinal mushroom farming in climate-stressed regions? Yes this could democratise it, as it opens the door to cultivating species which might otherwise be restricted by the local climate. The important thing to note is that conditions must be repeatable and consistent training should be implemented to maintain the quality of the end product. Mini Case Study Prompt: Vietnam has started branding its lingzhi (reishi) exports with provincial origin labels and blockchain traceability. Could Europe do something similar for small-scale growers? The consumers in Europe are increasingly paying more attention to traceability to know where the product has originated, and the level of quality. Provincial branding combined with simple digital traceability (QR codes showing grower, substrate, harvest date, lab test results) would allow cultivators to build trust and open themselves up to wider markets. Blockchain might be overcomplicating things when you can implement traceability into existing systems. The challenge might be how much this costs for small-scale cultivators to adopt. The Mushroom Coffee Phenomenon Beyond the Buzzword: Mushroom coffee has moved from hipster cafés to mainstream supermarket shelves. What, in your view, has driven its adoption — health science, influencer culture, or pandemic-era biohacking trends? People have been more concerned with their health since the Covid pandemic, and our lives have become more busy and possibly more stressful during this time. Mushroom coffee has provided an opportunity for people to engage with fungi in a familiar morning routine, whilst being a convenient way to obtain the benefits of the mushrooms. Certain health narratives such as the need to improve cognitive performance, reduce stress levels, or increase energy are just a few examples of what has been driving the trend, as well as the ritual of coffee and the rise of influencers and wider distribution markets opening up. Cultivation & Supply Chain Insights From Forest to Farm: Cultivating medicinal mushrooms is notoriously tricky — requiring sterile environments, controlled substrates, and patient timing. Can you walk us through what “good cultivation practice” looks like in this space? Successful cultivation of medicinal mushrooms begins with selecting good genetics and establishing clean, scalable spawn production. Maintaining sterility, implementing basic quality control, and ensuring that batches are fully traceable are essential steps in this phase. The next critical focus is on the substrate. Each mushroom species requires a specific substrate, and careful attention must be paid to moisture levels as well as proper pasteurization or sterilization techniques to optimize growth. Creating a controlled environment for fruiting is equally important. Consistency in humidity, temperature, air exchange, and lighting ensures predictable and high-quality yields. Alongside this, strict pest control and staff hygiene must be enforced, with daily logging of waste disposal to maintain cleanliness and prevent contamination. Post-harvest handling is another crucial step. Mushrooms must be dried properly, moisture content checked, and packaging completed quickly to preserve bioactive compounds. Regular testing and traceability are also vital, including lab analyses for identity, heavy metals, and microbes, and maintaining batch IDs from spawn through to harvest. Where feasible, lab testing of bioactive compounds adds an extra layer of quality assurance. Finally, keeping simple yet thorough records—tracking yields, failure modes, and environmental conditions—supports continuous improvement, scalability, and compliance with quality standards.Global Sourcing: China remains a dominant supplier for many medicinal mushroom ingredients. How do you see Europe and the UK building resilient, traceable, and possibly regenerative mushroom cultivation systems locally? We need to invest in more education in places like the UK where we can open up training for early career mycologists. We might see the creation of regional spawn hubs, the introduction of training programmes at agricultural colleges, incentives for regenerative substrate sourcing (using agro-waste), and a marketplace that rewards traceability and high quality products. It would be great to see public funding or a combination of public/private funding in places like the UK or EU to limit the risk for early career cultivators. Market & Investment Outlook Functional Beverages 2.0: Kombucha and matcha once had their heyday — now mushroom coffee is on the rise. Where do you see this category going in the next 5–10 years? Could we see major FMCG players acquiring or building mushroom coffee brands? It seems like we might be seeing market consolidation, where big FMCG players could either acquire successful independent brands or build in-house product lines because the category fits into mainstream tea/coffee/functional beverage portfolios. We’ll also see more of a focus on the creation of premium products, and more focus on the functional sub-categories such as sleep, focus, or relaxation. Regulation plays a big role in how these products can be marketed, so we should expect to see more neutral language talking about ‘support’ rather than making any kind of health claims. Investment appetite will favor vertically integrated players who control spawn → processing → branded distribution, where products such as extracts provide more value than just dried fungi. Intersection with Psychedelics & Culture Mindful Consumption: You’ve been involved in the psychedelic education space. Do you think the functional mushroom boom is quietly priming the public for a broader conversation about psychoactive fungi and mental health therapies? I actually think in places like the UK or USA, the opposite is occurring - people have been consuming magic mushrooms for many decades, but the functional mushroom boom is quite new. I think that psychoactive fungi have opened up people to the potential for many different types of fungi to heal us on the functional level. The use of psychoactive fungi in therapeutic settings precedes the rise in popularity of functional mushroom supplements, however it certainly makes it easier to talk about the benefit of psychoactive fungi now that everyone is talking about mushrooms such as Lion’s Mane, Reishi, or Cordyceps. The issue is how the conversation surrounding these therapies relates to the mushrooms themselves, and whether or not we’ll see a dominance in synthetic compounds to achieve specific aims, rather than utilising the power of the whole organism. Cultural Capital: Mushrooms have been spiritual symbols for centuries — from Siberian shamans to Mesoamerican rituals. Are we seeing a modern re-enchantment of fungi as part of a cultural shift toward reconnecting with nature? Yes, I believe that consumption of mushrooms allows us to relate more to Animist worldviews, where we can exist with nature in an interrelationship, rather than viewing fungi as simple commodities for our benefit. We can ascribe some sense of agency to the mushrooms, where they are assisting us with their energy and wisdom to exist more comfortably with the natural world. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that mushrooms are becoming more popular as we cause more destruction to the natural environment - they are clearly showing up at a time when we need them the most! Future of Mycology & Fungal Innovation Beyond Coffee: If mushroom coffee is the gateway, what’s the next frontier for medicinal mushrooms — mycelium-based supplements, adaptogen blends, or even functional food tech innovations like mycoprotein ? The next frontier for medicinal mushrooms is expected to see a rise in high-bioavailability extracts. Advanced techniques such as liposomal technology and ultrasound-assisted extraction, combined with carriers like vegetable glycerin, will allow better delivery of key compounds. There will likely be a shift in focus from traditional beta-glucans toward terpenes and other bioactive molecules, alongside the development of clinically-backed blends. Personalized fungal supplements are also emerging, with small-batch, carefully analyzed formulations targeting specific needs such as sleep, cognition, and inflammation. This tailored approach enables consumers to select products that align closely with their health goals. Functional food technologies represent another growth avenue. Mycoprotein and hybrid foods are expanding beyond meat substitutes into functional snacks and cognitive bars, integrating mushrooms into everyday diets in innovative ways. Beyond nutrition, myco-materials are gaining traction in industrial applications, including packaging and leather alternatives. These cross-industry uses are attracting investment and advancing fungal science in sustainability-focused sectors. Finally, clinical translation remains a key opportunity. Research on functional mushrooms is increasingly being integrated into treatment plans, providing a pathway for evidence-based health interventions and bridging the gap between wellness products and medical applications. ---- Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com) ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3263/billion-dollar-microbe-market-transforming-global-vegetable-supply-chains.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/3263/billion-dollar-microbe-market-transforming-global-vegetable-supply-chains.html Wed, 17 Sep 2025 11:27:31 +0530 For over fifty years, synthetic fertilisers powered global food production but caused soil degradation, water contamination, and greenhouse-gas emissions, prompting a shift toward sustainable alternatives. Biofertilisers—live microbial products—are emerging as a mainstream solution, improving nutrient uptake, plant resilience, and produce quality while integrating with precision agriculture systems. Policy support, particularly in India, the EU, and Denmark, is accelerating adoption through subsidies, regulatory compliance, and carbon-credit incentives. Regional case studies demonstrate that microbial inputs, when combined with sensor-guided fertigation and AI-driven management, can reduce synthetic nitrogen use by 15–35 per cent , boost yields, and enhance market value. The global takeaway: biofertilisers are not just environmentally necessary but a strategic enabler of profitable, precision-driven vegetable farming. For decades, synthetic nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers were the workhorses of the Green Revolution — turbocharging yields, slashing food prices, and feeding billions. But that victory came with a steep bill: degraded soils, polluted water, rising greenhouse gases, and dependence on inputs whose prices swing with global markets. The rules of fertilisation are now being rewritten. In high-value vegetable farming, the shift is unmistakable. Sustainability mandates, precision agtech, and microbial breakthroughs are pushing growers toward a new playbook. Biofertilisers — living microbes that boost nutrient uptake, soil health, and crop resilience — are stepping out of the margins and into the heart of production. They don’t just cut the fertiliser bill; they raise produce quality, strengthen plants against stress, and slot neatly into sensor-driven, fertigation-ready systems from India to Denmark. The question is no longer if they work — but how fast they can scale and reshape the economics of vegetable farming. From Idea to Instrument: The Biofertiliser Opportunity The science behind biofertilisers is solid. Symbiotic bacteria like Rhizobium, phosphate-solubilising microbes, and mycorrhizal fungi unlock bound nutrients, fix atmospheric nitrogen, and boost water-use efficiency. Meta-analyses show that, under proper management, biofertilisers can replace 20–30 per cent of synthetic N/P in vegetables without sacrificing yield — while improving firmness, vitamin levels, and shelf life. The market is catching up fast. IMARC Group projects the global biofertiliser sector to hit $2.5 billion in 2024, growing at over 11 per cent CAGR through 2030 — faster than most ag inputs. In high-value vegetable farming, where residue limits and sustainability standards are strict, adoption already tops 20 per cent. But scaling isn’t frictionless. Microbes are living products — they need cold chains, soil-specific tailoring, and precise timing. Farmers used to the consistency of synthetics can face uneven results if biofertilisers meet the wrong soil pH, moisture, or temperature. Policy Landscape: Aligning Incentives, Compliance, and Adoption Government policy is now the biggest accelerator — or brake — on biofertiliser adoption. In India, programmes like PKVY and NMSA are subsidising bio-inputs, funding farmer training, and running demo plots to de-risk adoption for both smallholders and commercial hubs. Fertiliser control rules and mandatory nutrient-use efficiency reporting are nudging growers toward balanced nutrition. States such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu add extra firepower with cold-chain support, certification, and advisory services — lowering the operational barriers to microbial use. ” With over a century of microbial expertise, now renewed by the merger of Novozymes and Christian Hansen, we are working to redefine how crops are nourished, protected and optimized. We work not only to replace chemical inputs, but also harness nature’s own solutions for improved and more resilient cropping systems, all while allowing growers to unlock additional yields from every acre. Our philosophy has always been to integrate our global R&D expertise with local needs. We see this in action in different ways. At the business level, as a deeply innovation driven company, we invest roughly 10 per cent of our turnover in R&D, a very significant proportion of our revenue ” — Kate Brandon Sutton, Head of Plant Biosolutions Applied R&D, Novonesis Precision agriculture is the force multiplier. Sensor-guided fertigation, drones, and AI agronomy platforms sync microbial application with crop growth stages, maximising yield response. But, as Katie Whittiker of Novonesis points out, India’s smallholder-heavy farm structure makes scaling a challenge. Subscription-based digital agronomy and shared drone services are emerging as cost-efficient solutions to bridge the gap. “Protected cultivation adds another layer of opportunity, particularly around urban consumption centres where quality, consistency, and residue compliance are non-negotiable. Here, biofertilisers and biostimulants can be precisely delivered through drip systems, aligning with the closed-loop, resource-efficient nature of greenhouses and shade-net operations”, opined Kattie. “Companies like Novonesis, which collaborate with cooperatives and input distributors, play a crucial role in bridging research-led innovation with last-mile farmer adoption — ensuring that advanced microbial solutions reach growers with proper guidance and compliance support “, she added. “Our long term partnerships with platforms like Benchling underscores our investment in cutting-edge R&D innovation and development of next-gen Biosolutions for emerging agricultural segments. We aim to do this in precision farming and protected agriculture segments by – Expanding the suite of microbe-based inputs tailored for high-value crops; Collaborating with organizations and cooperatives to enable data-driven decision making at the level of the farm and the field, and Supporting growers with robust stewardship programs that facilitate seamless adoption, and help maximize returns on investment " — Katie Whittiker, Head of Plant BioYield Business Unit, Novonesis Globally, regulation is uneven but decisive. The EU’s Fertilising Products Regulation (FPR 2019/1009) sets strict efficacy, safety, and traceability standards — critical for exporters facing tight nitrate and residue limits. In the Middle East and Africa, policy levers are tied to EU compliance: Turkey, Morocco, and Egypt are rapidly adopting microbial fertilisers to secure greenhouse exports, while Sub-Saharan rules remain patchy — a hurdle and opportunity for new entrants. Denmark offers a glimpse of the future: subsidies tied to nitrogen cuts, public-private R&D under the IBIS platform, and carbon-credit monetisation create a strong business case for biofertiliser use. Policy isn’t just compliance — it rewires market economics. Where governments integrate incentives, adoption rises faster, microbial performance is more consistent, and ROI for suppliers and growers improves. Precision Vegetable Farming Meets Biological Inputs Digital agriculture and microbial biosolutions are redefining performance standards in high-value vegetable farming. In both CEA and irrigated fields, blanket fertiliser applications are giving way to real-time, demand-driven nutrition. IoT soil sensors, AI-powered fertigation, and multispectral imaging now work in sync to deliver the right nutrients at the right moment — maximising efficiency and yield. ” Extensive global and regional trials on vegetable crops — including tomatoes, chilies, and leafy greens — consistently reveal that India’s average yields remain well below global benchmarks. This productivity gap underscores a significant opportunity for bio-inputs such as biofertilisers and biostimulants to drive both yield gains and sustainability outcomes. When integrated with optimised agronomic practices, biological solutions have delivered yield improvements exceeding 10 per cent compared with conventional methods. In India, fertigation-based trials have recorded yield increases of up to 18 per cent in tomatoes and chilies, while greenhouse experiments in Vietnam have demonstrated markedly improved nutrient uptake and superior quality in leafy vegetables. Validated through close collaboration with growers and research institutions, these results confirm the reliability of microbial inputs under real-world conditions " — Shanmugam Sambanthan, Commercial Head, Agriculture ,South Asia, Middle East and Africa, Novonesis Globally, the impact is striking. Israeli drip-irrigation pioneers like Netafim and Rivulis inject biofertilisers directly into root zones, boosting microbial colonisation and cutting synthetic nitrogen use 20–30 per cent without hurting yields. In Europe, greenhouse tomato growers combine microbial consortia with precision nutrients to hit nitrate-residue targets while sustaining export-grade productivity. A 2023 Wageningen study found 12–15 per cent yield gains and up to 40 per cent nitrate reductions when biofertilisers were paired with variable-rate fertigation. India is steadily moving toward this model, though adoption is concentrated in progressive clusters. Agritech start-ups are embedding microbial inputs into AI-driven agronomy platforms, giving smallholders access to tools once reserved for corporates. Subscription services for drones, sensors, and fertigation-as-a-service are lowering financial barriers. Early pilots in Nashik report tomato yield gains of 10–18 per cent and synthetic nitrogen savings of up to 35 kg/ha through precision-linked biofertilisers. Protected cultivation is another growth lever. Greenhouses and shade-net houses near urban centres enable year-round, residue-free, premium vegetables with lower post-harvest losses. Novonesis’ biofertiliser and biostimulant range, tailored for drip-irrigated systems, has delivered firmer bell peppers and cucumbers, higher marketable yields, and 12–15 per cent better nutrient-use efficiency, boosting grower margins. The benefits are clear: lower synthetic fertiliser costs, improved water efficiency, and premiums for low-residue produce. But scaling is local — what works for a protected cucumber farm in Bengaluru may not suit an open-field tomato grower in Rajasthan. Precision tools plus biological inputs aren’t just incremental; they mark a structural shift toward climate-resilient, resource-efficient farming. For policymakers, they advance fertiliser-reduction and soil-health goals. For growers, they boost per-hectare profitability while cutting input volatility. For investors, they signal a decade of data-driven, biology-led, sustainability-aligned growth. Across the globe, this integration is gaining traction. Israeli drip-irrigation firms inject biofertilisers into root zones to optimise colonisation. European greenhouse tomato growers pair microbial consortia with precision nutrients to meet yield and nitrate-residue standards. In India, agritech start-ups are embedding microbial inputs into AI-powered agronomy platforms, bringing precision farming to smallholders. Benchmarking Regional Pathways: India in Focus Biofertiliser adoption is global but uneven, following three distinct paths: scale-driven South Asia, scarcity-driven Middle East and Africa, and regulation-led Denmark. Each reflects unique market forces, infrastructure readiness, and regulatory pressures, offering lessons on where the microbial transition will accelerate and how businesses can position themselves. India leads South Asia, accounting for over 60 per cent of the region’s $143 million biofertiliser market in 2024, with 11–12 per cent annual growth projected. Policy is a major driver: PKVY and NMSA subsidise bio-inputs, fund training and demo plots, and incentivise adoption among smallholders and commercial vegetable hubs. Fertiliser controls and nutrient-use reporting further nudge farmers toward microbial solutions, especially where synthetic fertiliser costs are volatile. Domestic production adds a cost edge. Local Rhizobium, phosphate-solubilising microbes, and mycorrhizal inoculants are often 20–30 per cent cheaper than imports, while improved quality control builds trust. Smallholder economics are increasingly compelling: ICAR trials show integrated biofertiliser regimes in tomatoes, brinjal, and capsicum can boost yields 10–18 per cent, improve nutrient-use efficiency up to 25 per cent, and cut synthetic nitrogen by 35 kg/ha under fertigation. These results are reshaping the investment calculus for farmers, distributors, and downstream buyers alike. Shanmugam Sambanthan, Commercial Head, Agriculture ,South Asia, Middle East and Africa, Novonesis, expects India’s B2B bio-input market to evolve rapidly, though the highly fragmented agriculture landscape . ” Currently, bio-inputs are still a small fraction of overall inputs used by farmers. The fragmentation across farmlands provides can be a significant challenges to the adoption of Bio-inputs, particularly when it comes to reaching farmers through the direct trade, and most importantly in providing meaningful services to farmers. Along similar lines, companies including startups in the bio-input space struggle to scale due to the high investment and resource requirements needed for wide market reach “, Sambanthan opined. Novonesis has carved a distinct niche in India’s bio-inputs market as a B2B innovator, focusing on cutting-edge R&D rather than direct-to-farmer sales. Its strength lies in developing advanced microbial and biostimulant solutions while partners handle market reach, distribution, and farmer engagement — a win–win that accelerates adoption without diluting focus on innovation, quality, or regulatory compliance. A collaboration with KRIBHCO illustrates this model. By combining Novonesis’ next-generation biosolutions with KRIBHCO’s distribution network and agricultural expertise, the partnership scales access, ensures reliable supply, and co-invests in farmer awareness programs and demonstration plots across diverse crops and agro-climatic zones. The results are tangible: Irrigated vegetable hubs like Nashik (Maharashtra) and Kolar (Karnataka) report 30–40 per cent integration for high-value crops such as tomato and capsicum. Adoption lags in rainfed eastern and central regions ( ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/2584/breakthrough-research-demonstrates-how-gene-edited-microbes-offer-a-new-source-of-nitrogen-to-farmers.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/2584/breakthrough-research-demonstrates-how-gene-edited-microbes-offer-a-new-source-of-nitrogen-to-farmers.html Mon, 18 Nov 2024 11:42:29 +0530 Findings are the first, peer-reviewed evidence of gene-edited microbes supplying a material proportion of corn farmers' nitrogen in commercial production Peer-reviewed research published in Scientific Reports describes a new technology that could revolutionize a century-old approach to providing nitrogen to crops. The study, a collaboration of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Purdue University, and Pivot Bio, a leading sustainable agriculture company, presented first-of-its-kind evidence showing how gene-editing enhances microbes' ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen and transfer it to cereal crops. Using isotopically labeled nitrogen, researchers traced nitrogen in the air to chlorophyll of corn leaves, providing evidence that it was fixed from the air by the gene-edited microbes. Field studies also showed that these microbes could fix and supply nitrogen comparable to up to 40 pounds of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer per acre with similar yields. Improving the effectiveness of nitrogen fertilizers has been a long-standing challenge. "The core issue," explains Dr. Bruno Basso, a professor of environmental science at Michigan State University, who was not involved in the study, "is that the soil-plant-atmosphere system is extremely complex." Unpredictable weather makes it difficult to match nutrient supply to plants' demand, and to determine precisely how much nitrogen a crop will require and whether the nutrient will remain in the soil. The on-fields research strives to devise solutions to use nitrogen fertilizer more efficiently to increase profit and reduce environmental impact, such as nutrient losses to groundwater and greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Diazotrophs, special types of bacteria that occur in nature, have a unique ability to turn atmospheric nitrogen gas into ammonium, the building block of amino acids and proteins. This process, commonly known as biological nitrogen fixation (BNF), was the main form of nitrogen nutrition for crops for thousands of years before synthetic nitrogen fertilizer was invented. Researchers at Pivot Bio developed gene-edited microbes using non-transgenic methods to enable diazotrophs to continue providing nitrogen to the crop even under high nitrogen conditions. "With the gene edits, we blind microbes to the presence of nitrogen in their surroundings, so they continue to fix ammonium, delivering it directly on the root system," said Dr. Karsten Temme, chief innovation officer and co-founder at Pivot Bio and a co-author of the paper. "We also introduced other edits to ensure the bacteria can transfer the fixed nitrogen to the crop instead of keeping it for itself." The paper presents evidence of this process happening in the lab and field test plots. It is also the first peer-reviewed paper covering PROVEN® 40, Pivot Bio's second-generation commercial product for corn containing gene-edited nitrogen-fixing microbes. In the field, the researchers used a variety of isotopic experiments to again demonstrate nitrogen fixation, this time under real-world conditions, and quantify the nitrogen levels in the plant. They also collected hundreds of samples from farmers who reduced nitrogen fertilizer rate by 35 to 40 pounds of nitrogen per acre, replacing it with Pivot Bio's PROVEN 40. On average, researchers found plants treated with PROVEN 40 had higher nitrogen levels early in the season and no negative impacts on yield, even though they had received less synthetic fertilizer. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/2169/australias-appf-strives-strengthen-national-uav-phenotyping-capability.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/2169/australias-appf-strives-strengthen-national-uav-phenotyping-capability.html Wed, 29 May 2024 10:05:50 +0530 The new drones and GRYFN ‘Gobi’ sensor package will allow phenotyping of crop traits at high speed and with greater precision than currently possible.  Australian Plant Phenomics Facility's (APPF) national phenotyping capability strengthens with the recent delivery of one of the most sophisticated UAV phenotyping sensor packages ever deployed in Australia. The initiative will strengthen the capabilities of APPF’s network. The new drones and GRYFN ‘Gobi’ sensor package will allow phenotyping of crop traits at high speed and with greater precision than currently possible. This sophisticated multimodal package combines RGB, hyperspectral and LiDAR sensors with a world leading global positioning system to generate precisely aligned data from the three sensors. GRYFN provides an integrated software tool for processing these data streams against a common timeline. Combined with work done in APPF’s network of facilities, the aim is to allow Australian plant scientists faster delivery of new insights and crop improvements for the farming community. APPF team members from across Australia's national network of plant phenotyping nodes gathered in Adelaide in mid May for a week of training on the new drone platform, including detailed discussion of topics from planning flight profiles to collecting and processing data. GRYFN CEO Matt Bechdol, Director of Solutions Evan Flatt and UAS Pilot and Data Analyst Ryan Riley travelled to Adelaide from their base in Indiana, USA, to provide their insights and expertise on implementing the sensor and data processing packages. Training on the drone operating rules for Australia and conducting safe flight operations was provided by the University of Adelaide Unmanned Research Aircraft Facility (URAF), including URAF Director Molly Hennekam, Lead Data Analyst, Pilot and Instructor Dillon Campbell, and Senior Maintenance and Compliance Officer Steve Andriolo. Along with the classroom-style technical training and hands-on flying experience at Waite Oval, the course participants were able to use their time together to socialise, compare experiences and local issues, and strengthen the interpersonal bonds that connect our infrastructure network. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/1492/novel-agrivoltaics-solar-array-project-strives-to-optimize-farming-land-efficiency-using-solar-power.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/1492/novel-agrivoltaics-solar-array-project-strives-to-optimize-farming-land-efficiency-using-solar-power.html Mon, 23 Oct 2023 11:09:29 +0530 The research project received a four-year $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy via a program called Foundational Agrivoltaic Research for Megawatt Scale (FARMS) In a pioneering initiative, Iowa State University (ISU) is embarking on a research project to explore the combination of crops and solar power. The Alliant Solar Farm at Iowa State University is a groundbreaking agrivoltaics research project merging solar power generation and agriculture to study how best to optimize land use while providing local community benefits. The array was inaugurated on October 19th. Horticulture and agriculture students will plant crops to study how they perform under solar arrays of various heights and configurations. Engineering students will review solar production data to see how various crop plantings impact solar production. The research project received a four-year $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy via a program called Foundational Agrivoltaic Research for Megawatt Scale (FARMS). ISU was one of only six recipients of the $8 million dollar program. The research team is led by Ajay Nair, Associate Professor of Horticulture; Matt O'Neal Professor in Plant Pathology, Entomology and Microbiology; and Anne Kimber, Director of the Electric Power Research Center. The project is a collaboration between ISU and Alliant Energy. Alliant Energy owns and operates the solar array on land leased from the university. Waldinger Corporation was the general contractor for the project. Ideal Energy was subcontracted for solar design, procurement, monitoring, and solar commissioning for the project. Ideal Energy designers worked with ISU researchers to design a variety of solar configurations for testing purposes. Shive-Hattery, Inc. provided civil and electrical engineering services for the project. Ideal Energy designed the 1.757 MWDC / 1.375 MWAC solar field in two parts. One part is an 811 kWDC fixed-tilt solar array facing south. Six fixed-tilt rows have a standard leading edge of two feet off the ground in front and three rows have a leading edge height of five feet to test to see if higher solar arrays create better growing conditions. The second part is a 946 kWDC single-axis active tracker. Eighteen of the active-tracker rows are a standard five to six feet above the ground while five rows are eight to nine feet above the ground. All solar panels on the site are bifacial, meaning they generate power from both sides. Researchers plan to explore which crops thrive in a modified solar microclimate. They plan to plant vegetables, fruits, and pollinator habitats. They also intend to study how solar site maintenance impacts cultivation. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/1164/new-field-trial-indicates-biostimulants-can-enhance-nutrient-use-efficiency-nue.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/1164/new-field-trial-indicates-biostimulants-can-enhance-nutrient-use-efficiency-nue.html Tue, 11 Jul 2023 07:20:00 +0530 Study revels that farmers are driven to use biostimulants due to increase in nitrogen efficiency and a decrease in fertilizer expenses Efficient use of resources is key to maximizing yield potential and optimizing a grower's return on their fertilizer investment. Improving nutrient use efficiency (NUE) is a major concern for farmers as they plan input applications.  In a recent study on biostimulants, growers cited an increase in nitrogen efficiency and a decrease in fertilizer expenses as one of the key drivers for the use of biostimulants. As growers look to optimize inputs while meeting productivity goals, address regulatory pressure, and ultimately improve ROI, biostimulants provide a powerful tool to increase NUE. MArket analytics company Stratovation Group recently published the benchmark study observations on Farmer Perceptions of agricultural biologicals teaming up with TFI, Ara and DCLRS. Increasing NUE: Legislation & Restrictions Large fertilizer applications are an effective way to maximize yield, but this can result in offsite nutrient loss, which has led to increasing regulatory pressure. The European Commission aims to reduce nutrient losses by 50% by 2030, while maintaining soil fertility for crop production. This is projected to result in an overall 20% reduction in NPK fertilizer inputs. Compounding this challenge of reduced inputs, it is well known that 25–65% of fertilizers applied to crops are not fully utilized. Fertilizer efficiency can be impacted by a great number of factors, including environmental conditions, crop management, water quality, and soil health. As growers contend with these challenges, many are turning to biostimulants to optimize their NUE and increase their return on investment in fertilizer. Increasing Efficiency FBSciences, a global leader in the innovation and commercialization of climate-smart biorationals for agriculture is also a leader in NUE.  Through proprietary biostimulant technology, Transit® forms the foundation for comprehensive crop nutrition products. With Transit Soil® and Transit Foliar®, flagship biostimulant products, nutrients are rapidly uptaken, absorbed, and translocated inside plants, resulting in improved NUE, both of which are applied and those already present.  This increased nutrient uptake and utilization of nutrients means that more of what growers apply will actually get into the crops, resulting in less runoff and leaching, and less waste of a grower's fertilizer dollar. Increased NUE also reduces the necessary amount of applied fertilizer to achieve the same crop yield, meaning the same performance/results can be achieved with a lower application rate of other products. With soaring nitrogen fertilizer prices, being able to maintain efficacy and results with a lower application rate is crucial. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/1003/hong-kongs-agroforestry-group-expands-its-aquilaria-with-a-malaysian-rd-programme.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/1003/hong-kongs-agroforestry-group-expands-its-aquilaria-with-a-malaysian-rd-programme.html Thu, 01 Jun 2023 07:45:00 +0530 Aims to increase the growth of agarwood by accelerating the yield Hong Kong's Agroforestry Group has announced the expansion of its Aquilaria programme through collaboration with a Malaysian research and development company. The collaboration is driven by renowned scientific advisor Dr Baharuddin Salleh and includes Aquilaria inoculation and post-inoculation product development. In terms of inoculation, it is aimed specifically at increasing the success, speed and yield of agarwood in inoculated trees. Each stage in the inoculation process requires a different mixture of compounds. Agroforestry Group invests heavily in finding an optimal balance between performance enhancement and cost minimization.  Established in 2015, Agroforestry Group have applied their thirty years of private forestry management experience into the establishment and commercial development of durian and agarwood plantations, product distribution and sales. As an asset class, agriculture and forestry have expanded rapidly over the last decade. This is due to interest from risk-averse private investors attracted by the green credentials of the industry and the long-term high returns of agroforestry.  Paul Martin, Managing Director of Agroforestry Group, stated, "This collaboration has enhanced our research and development programme and has marked a significant milestone as we near the end of our inoculation research programme for Aquilaria trees planted in 2018 and 2019. By expanding our programme, we will be able to safeguard our ongoing research and development efforts as well as focus on post-inoculation product development. Aquilaria-based products include tea, fragrances, and other products". Martin further emphasized the immense value of the partnership, by highlighting the decades of experience that renowned Aquilaria expert, Dr. Baharuddin Salleh provides to the company. Dr Baharuddin Salleh, a distinguished researcher and author, formerly served as a Professor of Plant Pathology & Mycology at the University of Sains Malaysia (USM) and boasts an impressive portfolio of over 100 published works. His expertise and contributions will be instrumental in the progress of Agroforestry Group's initiatives in Aquilaria research and development. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/978/nifa-triggers-investigative-study-on-asian-longhorned-tick-causing-livestock-diseases.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/978/nifa-triggers-investigative-study-on-asian-longhorned-tick-causing-livestock-diseases.html Wed, 24 May 2023 10:00:00 +0530 Medgene awarded USDA funding to leverage the company's platform technology against tickborne disease targets The USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has awarded animal health company Medgene grant funding to study the Asian longhorned tick and its ability to spread diseases in animal livestock. The company will be using its proprietary platform technology to develop and test vaccine approaches to prevent the spread of diseases caused by the tick. Dr. Alan Young, Chief Technology Officer for Medgene, has been researching parasite borne diseases since 2013, studying the effects of tickborne diseases in whitetail deer. "Animal parasites and insects are major disease vectors that have significant impacts on wild animals and livestock. This partnership with USDA-NIFA shows the agency's awareness and dedication to addressing animal health concerns in the United States." Medgene's vaccine approaches leverage a USDA-approved "platform technology" that is safely and easily adapted to multiple animal disease targets. The result is the development of vaccines and an understanding of how diseases move within species and geography within a fraction of the time of traditional vaccine approaches.  Medgene received the award notice from USDA-NIFA in April and will begin field research this summer. The eight-month study will be conducted in conjunction with an independently-operated research facility and supported by an international team of recognized experts in tickborne diseases. Medgene will incorporate the results of this research into its current platform technology-based vaccine portfolio and ultimately apply these findings to other tickborne diseases, such as Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. ]]> https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/957/basf-kubota-and-zen-noh-collaborates-to-help-optimise-japans-rice-production.html https://agrospectrumasia.com/news/85/957/basf-kubota-and-zen-noh-collaborates-to-help-optimise-japans-rice-production.html Thu, 18 May 2023 11:44:18 +0530 It is anticipated that full integration between xarvio FIELD MANAGER and Kubota’s KSAS platform will be commercially available in Japan from spring 2024. BASF, Kubota and ZEN-NOH will collaborate to help improve and optimize rice production in Japan. The collaboration consists of two phases, beginning with the integration of BASF’s advanced xarvio® FIELD MANAGER crop optimization platform with Kubota’s state-of-the art KSAS operating platform to assess operability. By connecting xarvio FIELD MANAGER with Kubota’s powerful KSAS farming and service support system, the seamless transfer and use of xarvio FIELD MANAGER’s variable application maps for fertilization by KSAS compatible rice transplanters is realised, without the need for an added device for data transfer. It is anticipated that full integration between xarvio FIELD MANAGER and Kubota’s KSAS platform will be commercially available in Japan from spring 2024. The main aim of platform integration is to deliver greater convenience, increase yield, optimize fertilizer use, and provide a higher return on investment for farmers. This outcome would tackle many of the challenges affecting rice production in Japan, including an ageing workforce, labor shortages, and the consolidation of farmland. It would also help farmers become more sustainable, globally competitive and meet established fertilizer reduction targets listed in the country’s MeaDRI strategy for sustainable food systems. Phase two of the collaboration will test the performance of platform integration through field trials in rice crops, which will be managed by ZEN-NOH. The field trials will be held during the 2023 growing season and involve farmers experienced with using xarvio FIELD MANAGER, Kubota’s KSAS platform and its machinery. Here farmers will use the KSAS platform and Kubota rice transplanters to implement field-specific, xarvio FIELD MANAGER variable application maps for fertilization. The results of these new field trials will complement those achieved in more than 100 field trials conducted in rice crops last year by ZEN-NOH and BASF. In last year’s field trials, xarvio FIELD MANAGER’s variable application maps for fertilization were used and compared to standard fertilization application practices. By using xarvio FIELD MANAGER’s variable application maps, yield increases of between 15% to 20% were achieved, with an average fertilizer input reduction of 10% recorded. In some cases, depending on field conditions, fertilizer use was reduced by up to 50%. Konstantin Kretschun, Global Head of BASF Digital Farming, comments: “Rice farmers in Japan recognize the need to become more sustainable and globally competitive, while reducing environment impacts and meeting MeaDRI strategy targets. Climate smart farming technology provides a proven, effective and available solution to help them achieve these goals. By working closely with Kubota and our valued partner in ZEN-NOH to connect offerings, we can together deliver even greater value to farmers and positively transform rice production in Japan.” ]]>