Biostimulants for cereal and oilseed crops

A wide variety of biostimulant products are available for use on cereal and oilseed rape crops but they need careful selection and management.

Back to: Biostumulants: Function and efficacy

Are biostimulants effective?

In 2016, AHDB reviewed the mode of action, efficacy and value of commercially available biostimulant products. Biostimulants were classified into distinct ‘product type’ categories.

The table below summarises the level of evidence to which a type of biostimulant promotes plant nutrition, growth, yield and/or tolerance to a disease or pest.

Good = good evidence, wide evidence base including multiple field-based experiments
Moderate = moderate evidence, experiments included some that were field-based and/or on cereals or oilseed rape crops
Low = low evidence, principally laboratory experiments with little or no data on cereal or oilseed rape crops
N/A = Not enough evidence available

		Promote plant nutrition?			Improve plant growth and yield?			Promote biotic stress tolerance?
Group	Product type	Nitrogen	Phosphorus	Other nutrients	Hormonal	Growth	Yield	Pathogen	Pest
Non-microbial	Seaweed extracts	Low	Low	Low	Moderate	Moderate	Moderate	Low	Low
	Humic substances	Moderate	Low	Low	Low	Moderate	Moderate	N/A	N/A
	Phosphite and other inorganic salts	N/A	N/A	N/A	Low	Moderate	Moderate	Moderate	N/A
	Chitin and chitosan derivatives	N/A	N/A	N/A	Low	Moderate	Moderate	Good	Low
	Antitranspirants	N/A	N/A	N/A	Good	N/A	Moderate	N/A	N/A
	Protein hydrolysates and free amino acids	Low	N/A	Low	N/A	Low	Low	N/A	N/A
Microbial	Plant growth promoting bacteria	Moderate	Moderate	Low	Low	Good	Good	Moderate	Low
	Non-pathogenic fungi	Low	Low	Low	Low	Moderate	Moderate	Moderate	N/A
	Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi	Low	Moderate	Low	N/A	Moderate	Moderate	Low	Low

Useful links

AHDB Research Review on biostimulants for cereal and oilseed crops

Topics:

Nutrition

Sectors:

Cereals & Oilseeds

Tags:

cereal oilseed rape