Microbial Fertilizers Usher in Development Opportunities, China's Annual Output Value Reaches 15 Billion Yuan
"In recent years, excessive use of chemical fertilizers has led to soil acidification, a decline in soil organic matter content, destruction of soil physical structure, imbalance in the structure of soil functional microbial flora, and a sharp drop in soil productivity. Microbial fertilizers, with their five major functions of increasing yield, improving quality, enhancing crop stress resistance, raising chemical fertilizer utilization efficiency, and improving the soil nutrient environment, have attracted widespread attention and become a new direction for future fertilizer development." This is the information conveyed at China's First Biological Bacterial Fertilizer Innovative Application Summit Forum held on July 26 in Baoding, Hebei.
Li Jun, director of the Microbial Fertilizer and Edible Fungus Spawn Quality Inspection Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that the use of chemical fertilizers has contributed to safeguarding national food security, but has also brought problems including environmental pollution, ecological imbalance, soil acidification, declining biological fertility, and the quality and safety of agricultural products. Improving the soil ecological environment through microbial fertilizers, raising chemical fertilizer utilization efficiency, and reducing the amount of chemical fertilizer used are of very practical significance. In the future, products such as organic material decomposition inoculants, soil remediation inoculants, rhizobium inoculants, and phosphate-solubilizing inoculants, as well as functional inoculants dedicated to cash crops such as fruit trees and tobacco, bio-organic fertilizers, and drought-resistant inoculants, will become hot spots for research, development, and promotion.
It is understood that at present China's microbial fertilizers are mainly agricultural microbial inoculants, bio-organic fertilizers, and compound microbial fertilizers. The total number of microbial fertilizer enterprises nationwide is about 950, with an annual output of 10 million tons and an annual output value of 15 billion yuan. As of June this year, the Ministry of Agriculture had registered 2,015 products, with a cumulative annual application area exceeding 100 million mu.
Xu Hao, dean of the College of Resources and Environmental Sciences at Hebei Agricultural University, believes that in developing microbial fertilizers, the significance of school-enterprise cooperation lies in continuously expanding the functions of scientific and technological development and technology promotion, and gradually extending from industry-university cooperation to industry-university-research cooperation." Implementing the combination of production and education can serve local economic construction, maintain close ties with enterprises, and transform technology into real productivity."
As the organizer of the conference, Zhang Honggang, chairman of Hebei Mindefu Group Co., Ltd., told reporters that there are currently more than 7,000 fertilizer enterprises in China, and in the highly competitive fertilizer industry, it is difficult to develop smoothly without sustained innovation. Mindefu Company has long been engaged in research and development work including microbial concentrate technology, conventional fertilizer inoculation technology, fertilizer coating technology, and one-time fertilization technology for field crops, and applies new technologies to practice every year. Years of experimental demonstrations show that microbial fertilizers can improve soil structure, raise fertilizer utilization efficiency, enhance crop stress resistance, increase crop yield, and improve the quality of agricultural products. They are generally welcomed by farmers and represent the direction of future new fertilizer development.
Experts from the Microbial Fertilizer Quality Inspection Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, Hebei Agricultural University, the Hebei Northern Mountainous Area Research Institute, China National Agricultural Means of Production Group Holding Co., Ltd., Hebei Mindefu Biotechnology Co., Ltd., and Japan Enzyme Bacteria World Society, as well as more than 300 dealers from across the country, attended the conference.