Agri-inputs & biocontrol
The product is a population and is regulated as one; delivery decides before biology does; and several categories here are defined by claimed effect rather than by mechanism.
Fifteen subjects that share one uncomfortable fact: the product is a population, and it is regulated as one. A microbial inoculant does not act like an active ingredient — it establishes, competes and persists, which is why it works where the niche is empty (silage has no competitors; a mycorrhizal hypha helps where the soil’s own fungi are not already there) and why a consortium assembled in vitro stops being that community within a week of reaching soil.
The second recurring idea: delivery decides before biology does. A seed coating is decided by drying, binder and shelf life rather than by the strain; RNAi is precise to the nucleotide but limited to whether the RNA ever reaches the cytoplasm; mating disruption works across an area and fails on a plot for reasons of scale, not chemistry.
The third: several categories here are defined by claimed effect, not by mechanism — biostimulants above all — and the pages distinguish the two wherever the evidence allows.
Start with biofertilizers and biopesticides; it frames the population logic that the specific pages — pheromones, RNAi, endophytes, silage — keep re-encountering.
Articles 15
| Bee health biopreparations An insect has no antibodies — so what is a bee vaccine actually doing? |
| Microbial terroir engineering in viticulture Mycorrhiza, elicitors and microbial terroir — which part is a mechanism and which part is a correlation. |
| Bioherbicides and ecological weed control Why a natural herbicide is applied in kilograms where a synthetic one is applied in grams. |
| Biostimulants A category defined by claimed effect rather than by mechanism — and what follows from that. |
| Peptide crop protection A peptide hits its target precisely — once it gets there. |
| Pheromones and semiochemicals in crop protection Mating disruption works across an area and fails on a plot — for reasons of scale, not chemistry. |
| RNAi biopesticides A mechanism precise to the nucleotide, limited by whether the RNA ever reaches the cytoplasm. |
| Soil microbiome: what is actually measured DNA from a handful of soil returns read proportions, not counts of living cells — and everything else follows from that. |
| Bio seed coatings Why a microbial coating is decided by drying, binder and shelf life rather than by the strain. |
| Biofertilizers and biopesticides What living crop protection and nutrition products share is not a mechanism: the product is a population, and it is regulated as one. |
| Biological nitrification inhibitors A root that suppresses the nitrifiers around it — and why the exudation rate matters more than the potency of the compound. |
| Endophytic microbes as an agricultural product Living inside a plant is a truce rather than an address: how the microbe gets in, why it is tolerated, and why transmission decides the field result. |
| Mycorrhizal inoculants A hypha reaches past the phosphorus depletion zone around a root — but only where the soil's own fungi are not already there. |
| Silage biopreparations The one inoculant that reliably establishes — because it is applied into a habitat with no competitors. |
| Synthetic microbial consortia for soil A community assembled in vitro stops being that community within a week of reaching soil. |