Biocontrols Still Show Promising Growth Trend

About 50 exhibiting companies and 700 people gathered in Basel, Switzerland this week for the Annual Biocontrol Industry Meeting. The segment’s leading global gathering, a production of the International Biocontrols Manufacturers Association (IBMA) and the Research Institute for Organic Agriculture, is celebrating its 10th year. The three-day event included an exhibition and congress that featured presentations from regulators, grower organizations, academia, and companies of various sizes and capacities.

The biocontrol industry is a projected to generate about $2 billion in sales this year, according to DunhamTrimmer, and it is trending toward continued growth for the foreseeable future. The research firm expects the segment’s market share to double by 2020.

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Bayer CropScience Vice President of Global Marketing Ashish Malik told attendees that biocontrols could represent a new green revolution by understanding how biological products interact with plants. “There is an opportunity for us to change the way agriculture works around the world,” he said. “But integrated solutions and programs require knowing the needs of the farmer at the local level.”

He said he expects the industry to grow during the next 10 years as farmers continue to demand more integrated solutions and programs, and there is a potential market in nearly every crop in every country around the world.

But that growth has its challenges, including product knowledge transfer through the value chain and regulatory hurdles, especially in the EU, where the European Commission’s 1107/2009 regulation does not permit fast-track registration for biocontrol products. But there is good news on the horizon as the European Commission is planning its routine re-evaluation of the regulation with an emphasis on creating more favorable framework for biocontrol products, according to Wolfgang Reinert, head of the EC’s Directorate for Health and Food Safety.

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The anticipated revision is a welcomed development in Europe, where about 265 traditional chemistries have been lost due to regulations, which have significantly depleted tools that growers can use for pest control. Research and development of biological products could fill the void of products farmers need to address specific agronomic challenges, according to Luc Peeters, relationship manager of BelOrta, Europe’s largest cooperative that is fully run by its more than 1,350 growers. He called for biological manufacturers to partner more collaboratively with extension services and growers around the world to generate more pragmatic R&D studies that correlate to real-field situations.

The next conference and exhibition for the biocontrol industry will take place March 3-4 at the Hyatt Regency Monterey in California, USA. The Biocontrols USA 2016 Conference and Expo, held in conjunction with the Biopesticide Industry Alliance, the U.S.-based association for the biocontrols industry. BPIA is part of the newly formed federation for the segment that also includes IBMA, the South African Bioproducts Organization, The Association of Natural Biocontrol Producers (U.S.), and ABCBio (Association of Brazilian Biocontrol Businesses).

 

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