Joining forces
for a greener agriculture
As agriculture is pushed towards more sustainable practices, we at Bioomix are putting all our efforts into developing effective, natural alternatives to traditional agrochemicals, and we’re eager to share our thoughts and experiences on some of the processes with you.
Developing eco-friendly solutions that bring value to farmers is not an easy task, and introducing new microbial products on farmland comes with a great deal of responsibility. They must perform at least as well as the currently used agrochemicals and be safe to use.
Once we have the right microbe, that has passed safety testing, we invest a lot of time and resources in designing field studies and optimizing product formulation according to good scientific practice. Running unbiased, large-scale field trials, and benchmarking against other similar products on the market, is an essential part of our work, but to do it alone would be almost impossible. That is why, we use external field trial providers, like VKST, that have been testing farming products since 1984. Zahra Salimi, plant researcher at Bioomix, talks about what having this opportunity means for us:
“Companies like VKST bring a lot of expertise in conducting agricultural experiments according to correct government and EU procedures. They have the capacity to run large-scale experiments that would be very challenging for us to set up on our own.”
The facilities at VKST also give us the opportunity to test our products relatively fast on a wide variety of crops and fields, generating data that we can use to assess product performance. This is an important step towards developing microbial biostimulants that work.
Helle Kjærsgård Sørensen, horticultural technician at Bioomix, explains why collecting data on the effect of microbial products is critical:
“Data gathering is important because we are dealing with biology. There are so many different factors and aspects that affect the soil, plants, and microorganisms, and we need to understand them.”
But the final test comes when farmers use our product. We always suggest that they start applying the biostimulant on a small part of their field to see how it performs.
Lab, field and farm testing are equally important for the success of microbial products, and we are fortunate to work with experts at each step along the way.
Through collaboration, we can put effective biological solutions into the hands of our farmers!