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NO.26 EDITION, AUGUST, 2025 |
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China leads global microbial fertilizer development with over 10,000 registered products and 40+ million tons in annual production. This article examines China's regulatory framework, industry achievements, and strategic development directions. These insights provide industry intelligence for international companies seeking to enter China's microbial fertilizer sector.
Regulatory framework of microbial fertilizers in China
China has established a clear regulatory definition for microbial fertilizers. Under the National Standard GB 20287-2006, microbial fertilizers are defined as products containing specific living microorganisms, used in agricultural production to increase plant nutrient supplies, promote plant growth, increase yields, improve the quality of produce, and benefit the agroecological environment, through the biological activities of their constituent microorganisms.
The newly revised agricultural industry standard (2023) for microbial fertilizers explicitly adds "enhancing resistance to stress" as a defined function of microbial fertilizers. This expansion is significant because, while China has not yet established separate legislation specifically for biostimulants, microbial products with biostimulant properties can be registered as microbial fertilizers, and their stimulating functions can be indicated on labels and instructions.
Chinese regulations categorize microbial fertilizers into three types:
1) Microbial inoculants in agriculture: These are products containing one or more functional microorganisms that are either applied directly after industrial multiplication or formulated into living-microbial products through concentration or carrier adsorption. This category includes rhizobia inoculant, nitrogen-fixing inoculant, phosphate-solubilizing inoculant, silicate-dissolving inoculant, photosynthetic bacterial inoculant, organic matter decomposing inoculant, growth-promoting inoculant, mycorrhizal inoculant (AM inoculant), and inoculant for soil amendment. (GB 20287-2006)
2) Microbial organic fertilizers: These products combine microorganisms with organic matter/fertilizers derived from animal and plant residues. (NY 884-2012)
3) Compound microbial fertilizers: These products integrate microorganisms with both organic matter and inorganic nutrients. (NY/T 798-2015)
Microbial fertilizer registration started in 1996, and the first registrations of such products were approved in 1997. Over nearly three decades, China has developed a microbial fertilizer standard system, which includes both National Standard (GB) and Agricultural Industry Standard (NY), covering general standards, safety standards, product standards, method standards and technical rules. The standard system, containing more than 30 GB and NY standards, provides the regulatory foundation for product manufacturing, application, registration review, quality arbitration and market supervision enforcement.
Microbial fertilizers enhance agricultural production with six functions
The value of microbial fertilizers extends far beyond traditional fertilization. According to standards NY/T 1847 and GB/T 41727, these products deliver six distinct functions:
1) Nutrient provision or activation: Microbial fertilizers enhance plant nutrition through multiple mechanisms: nitrogen fixation, phosphorus solubilization, potassium dissolution, trace element activation, and facilitated nutrient transport within plant systems.
2) Production of bioactive compounds: These products generate various growth-promoting substances, such as gibberellins, indoleacetic acid, and cytokinins, which significantly enhance crop growth potential and developmental processes.
3) Soil amelioration: Microbial fertilizers improve soil structure, and mitigate soil contamination.
4) Organic material decomposition enhancement: The microbial components accelerate the decomposition of organic materials, facilitating their conversion into high-quality organic fertilizers and improving soil organic matter content and fertility.
5) Produce quality improvement: Application of microbial fertilizers enhances both the visual appearance and intrinsic quality of agricultural produce.
6) Stress resistance enhancement: These products strengthen crop resilience by inhibiting pest occurrences, improving resistance to lodging, drought, and cold stress, and addressing challenges associated with continuous cropping.
Current status of microbial fertilizer industry in China
China's microbial fertilizer industry has achieved substantial scale, encompassing 4,500 production companies (including 30 overseas entities) with an annual production output exceeding 40 million tons and generating an annual output value of over 40 billion yuan.
According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China (MARA, July 11, 2025), there are 10,781 microbial fertilizer products approved by MARA. The product application coverage has exceeded 500 million mu (over 33.3 million hector).
Among these registered products, there are 5,486 microbial inoculants, accounting for 50.9% of the total products, 3,507 microbial organic fertilizers, 32.5% of the total registrations, and 1,788 compound microbial fertilizers, accounting for 16.6%.
The development of China's microbial fertilizer industry is characterized by three achievements:
1) Extensive product diversification: The industry demonstrates variety with over 10 product categories and more than 200 functional microbial strains. This diversity is further enhanced by continuous innovation in compound product formulations.
2) Wide application: Microbial fertilizers have achieved widespread adoption across almost all crop types, and established themselves as major fertilizers for high-value crops, such as vegetables, fruit trees, tea, and Chinese medicinal herbs, to reduce chemical fertilizer use, enhance nutrient efficiency, promote soil remediation, and improve crop quality.
3) Substantial industrial scale: Beyond achieving significant production capacity, the industry continues to experience rapid growth, positioning itself as an indispensable contribution to China's sustainable agriculture.
Despite these notable achievements, the industry faces three challenges that require strategic attention:
1) The sector faces a shortage of superior functional microbial strains, and there is an urgent need to deepen research into metabolite functions and colonization mode of action. This knowledge gap limits the development of next-generation products with enhanced performance characteristics.
2) Current products suffer from suboptimal efficacy stability, creating a performance gap between laboratory conditions and field applications. The application methods under different conditions needs to be improved.
3) The fermentation production processes require technological upgrades. Modernizing these manufacturing systems is essential for maintaining competitive advantage and supporting continued expansion of the industry.
Industry development directions
In response to current industry challenges, the industry needs to prioritize and advance four critical development directions:
1. Advanced strain selection
The industry can focus on acquiring exceptional new functional strains, particularly rhizosphere microorganisms. Priority should be given to screening strains that demonstrate high safety profiles, strong colonization capacity, efficient interaction with crops and nutrients, optimal production costs and quality, and multifunctional capabilities.
Development of novel screening methodologies based on comprehensive understandings of plant-soil-microorganism interactions will be helpful to identify characteristic functional microorganisms.
Overcoming culture bottlenecks through emerging technologies, such as culturomics, will expand available strain resources.
In-depth investigation of microbial metabolites will facilitate the development of next-generation functional fertilizers.
2. Production process optimization: Enhancing quality and stability
Liquid fermentation enhancement: Achieving high microbial cell density through precise control of nutrient supply, temperature, and agitation parameters at early stage; stimulating secondary metabolic pathways to produce and accumulate functional compounds, such as growth-promoting substances, amino acids, and humic acids, at late stage.
Solid fermentation advancement: Particularly for high-density fermentation of actinomycetes and fungi, key optimization areas include:
- pH management: Implementing microbial decomposition strategies or others that inhibit ammonia production during livestock and poultry manure composting, coupled with efficient fermentation tank exhaust gas collection and treatment systems.
- Functional compound accumulation in the late stage of fermentation: Optimizing temperature, ventilation and other process parameters to extend secondary metabolism production and maximizing accumulation of beneficial substances, such as humic acids, amino acids and other growth-promoting substances.
3. Specialized portfolio development
The industry can concentrate on five strategic application areas and create differentiated product offerings:
Inoculants for soil amendment
High-efficiency decomposing inoculants
Microbial fertilizers for produce quality improvements
Microbial fertilizers for crop yield increases, cost reductions and efficiency enhancements
Products for crop stress resistance improvements
4. Synthetic biology integration
The integration of synthetic biology represents a transformative opportunity for the industry. This cutting-edge technology enables tailored microbial design for specific agricultural applications, and evolution from traditional fermentation approaches to precision-engineered solutions
The information in this article is compiled from presentations by Li Jun (Head of the Microbial Fertilizer and Edible Mushroom Quality Inspection Center, MARA), and Du Sen (Chief Expert of the National Agricultural Technology Extension Service Center, MARA), at the Biopesticides, Biostimulants and Biofertilizers Summit (BioEx 2024 and BioEx 2025 respectively), organized by AgroPages.
Source:AgNews
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