In recent years, global agriculture has entered a phase of high uncertainty. Extreme weather events such as heatwaves, floods, prolonged droughts, and severe storms have evolved from occasional disasters in the past into regular factors reshaping the global agricultural production pattern. These climate shocks not only directly threaten the stability of crop yields but also force farmers, regulatory authorities, and input suppliers to completely restructure the combination logic of fertilizer and plant protection schemes. Against this backdrop, achieving in-depth integration of crop nutrition and plant protection ingredients with biostimulants as a bridge to create integrated solutions has become a core trend for the industry to break through predicaments. This transformation is driven not only by climate pressure but also by the dual impetus of regulatory guidance and market demand.

Regulatory Restructuring: From Compliance Baseline to Competitive Starting Point

Driven by the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the "carbon neutrality" agenda, the regulatory framework for chemical pesticides and fertilizers is undergoing unprecedented tightening, while the policy space for bio-based products continues to expand, providing a compliance foundation for the synergy between nutrition and plant protection.

The tightening restrictions on chemicals have become a global consensus. According to data from the European Crop Protection Association, more than 50% of pesticide active ingredients in the EU have been gradually phased out or restricted, triggering a "pesticide withdrawal wave". A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) further reveals the in-depth crisis caused by excessive fertilizer use - nearly 70% of nitrogen fertilizers globally have low utilization efficiency, which not only leads to resource waste but also triggers environmental problems such as greenhouse gas emissions and water eutrophication. This has prompted countries around the world to introduce policies promoting "fertilizer reduction and efficiency improvement". This regulatory trend has formed a clear market orientation: the restriction on chemical pesticides has spawned the supplementary demand for biological control, while fertilizer reduction has created broad space for biostimulants to improve fertilizer utilization efficiency.

Typical regulatory cases in various countries further clarify this transformation path. The EU, through the Fertilising Products Regulation (EU FPR 2019/1009), defined biostimulants as an independent category (PFC6) in 2022. Products that have completed conformity assessment and obtained the CE mark can circulate freely in 27 member states. The continuous expansion of third-party certification capacity with new notified bodies being approved in 2025 has further lowered the compliance threshold. The scope of microorganisms is strictly limited to Azotobacter, Azospirillum, Rhizobium, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi; products beyond this scope still need to follow local approval procedures. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) clarified the boundary between "biostimulants and plant regulators" in its latest draft guidance in 2024. Permitted claims include "improving nutrient efficiency, enhancing abiotic stress tolerance, and improving quality", while statements such as "preventing and controlling specific diseases/pests" may trigger pesticide regulatory scrutiny. Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) stated in its 2023-2028 re-evaluation plan that inspections on label claims, GLP tests, and value verification will become more frequent. The implementation of Brazil's "Biological Inputs Law" (2020) has led to the number of biological input registrations exceeding that of chemical pesticides for the first time, and a "green channel" has been established. In the 2023/24 fiscal year, the retail sales of bioinputs reached 5 billion Brazilian reals (approximately 924 million U.S. dollars), with an average annual growth rate of 21% in the past three years, which is four times the global average; among them, Mato Grosso alone accounted for 33%, and soybeans, corn, and sugarcane are the key application crops.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the policy orientation is equally clear. China's "14th Five-Year Plan" explicitly promotes fertilizer reduction and biological fertilizer substitution, with many regions introducing supporting green certification and procurement incentive policies. India's 2022 "National Organic Agriculture Policy" included microbial fertilizers and biostimulants in the promotion catalog, focusing on supporting field crops such as rice and wheat. The core logic of these regulatory changes is highly consistent: while tightening chemical control, they recognize the product value of "improving nutrient efficiency and stress resistance", enabling the "nutrition × plant protection" synergy to move from a gray area of the industry to a compliant blue ocean. As the industry consensus goes, regulations are no longer merely compliance requirements but have become the starting point for enterprises' differentiated competition. Rapidly building the three core capabilities of "data-compliance-label" has become the key to seizing regional markets.

Market Transformation: From Single Demand to Craving for Integrated Solutions

Driven by both extreme climate and consumption upgrading, the agricultural input market is shifting from the product logic of "single yield increase/protection" to the value logic of "integrated solutions", and four driving forces jointly form the underlying support for this transformation.

The technical logic of stress resistance synergy takes precedence. Under climate stress, sufficient nutrient supply is a prerequisite for crops to produce stress-resistant substances such as proline and antioxidants, while the plant protection function of biostimulants can effectively activate stress-resistant pathways. The combination of the two achieves a synergistic effect of "1+1>2". Cost synergy directly addresses farmers' pain points: compared with the traditional model of purchasing fertilizers, root stimulants, and disease-preventing agents separately, the composite formula of "nutrition + stimulation + prevention and control" not only saves procurement costs but also reduces application procedures. The essence of "one product with multiple effects" is cost optimization brought by functional synergy.

Dual constraints from the supply chain and market have further accelerated the transformation process. Food companies and retail giants have put forward clear sustainability requirements for the supply chain: carbon footprint control promotes the reduction of chemical fertilizer use in the planting link and encourages the replacement of some synthetic chemicals with low-carbon biological products; pesticide residue compliance directly determines the market access of exported agricultural products. Therefore, biostimulants and "green prevention and control" products are favored. The sustainability standards of food companies require simultaneous reduction of fertilizer and pesticide footprints, which naturally requires synergetic solutions. Consumers' demand for "safety" and "nutrition" forces the upstream from the terminal - healthy soil provides the nutrient foundation, and green prevention and control ensures product safety. The synergy of the two is the core support for high-quality agricultural products.

Changes in market demand have spawned a profound transformation in marketing models. The "nutrition × plant protection" synergy has evolved from a technical concept to a three-dimensional implementation system of "solution + evidence + positioning". Solution synergy achieves the upgrade from "product combination" to "functional coupling". For example, in the "stress resistance package" (amino acids + seaweed polysaccharides + chitosan oligosaccharides), the nutritional component (amino acids) provides the nutritional foundation for repairing stress damage and promoting crop growth, while the plant protection/stimulation components (seaweed polysaccharides and chitosan oligosaccharides) activate the crop's stress-resistant immune pathways. The two work synergistically to achieve the goal of "yield preservation", and its value is far higher than the simple superposition of individual products. Evidence synergy builds a "data-value" closed loop. The value of synergetic solutions needs to be proven by synergetic evidence. Traditional single-effect data is insufficient to reflect the coupling advantage of "1+1>2", so a multi-dimensional evidence chain is required to form a joint force. This not only involves displaying data but also demonstrating "synergetic value": field trials need to simultaneously monitor nutritional indicators (such as chlorophyll content, plant biomass, nutrient utilization efficiency, etc.) and plant protection/stress resistance indicators (such as disease incidence, changes in soil microbial community, stress-resistant enzyme activity, proline content, etc.), and use comprehensive data to prove how the solution ultimately achieves crop health and high yield and quality through synergetic effects. Positioning synergy realizes the unification of global strategy and localized implementation. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for "synergy", and its most efficient form must be highly localized. This means that enterprises must achieve strategic synergy between the global synergetic technology platform and localized pain point solutions. Crop/soil orientation itself is the target of synergy: in Brazil, "root promotion (nutrition)" is synergized with "nematode control (plant protection)"; in saline-alkali land, "supplementation of inorganic elements (nutrition)" is synergized with "salt tolerance improvement (stress resistance)". This requires in-depth integration of enterprise R&D and marketing to design the most accurate synergetic solutions for the composite systems of crops, soil, climate, and diseases in different regions.

Future Trends: Four Directions Defining the New Industry Pattern

The synergetic revolution of nutrition and plant protection is irreversible. Four trends are defining the future pattern of the agricultural input industry, driving the industry from single product competition to ecosystem competition.

Biostimulants have achieved a mainstream leap from "auxiliary" to "core". In the European and Latin American markets, biostimulants have evolved from optional products to necessary ones, and more and more are being included in agricultural input packages, on a par with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. For example, in Brazil, the number of biological product registrations exceeded that of pesticides for the first time in 2022. The future trend is "embedded" application: biostimulants will no longer be sold independently but will be integrated as a core component of compound fertilizers, foliar fertilizers, and seed treatment agents to exert synergetic effects.

Digital integration drives the upgrading of precise input. Data from FAO and the World Bank shows that agricultural losses caused by extreme climate amount to tens of billions of US dollars annually, making prediction and response capabilities a core demand. With the popularization of remote sensing, IoT sensors, and AI decision-making platforms, farmers will receive customized input recommendations based on weather models, soil moisture, and disease warnings. Within this framework, nutrition × plant protection composite products will be the most valuable, as they can meet the multi-dimensional needs recommended by the model with one application, reducing "multiple purchases + multiple applications".

Strategic alliances reshape the industry competition pattern. Industry giants are accelerating their layout through strategic cooperation to build an integrated "nutrition × plant protection" platform. For example, Corteva invested in Symbiomics through its Catalyst platform in June 2025 to jointly use its proprietary genomics platform to screen high-efficiency microorganisms to improve crop yield and stress resistance. This move has strengthened Corteva's biostimulant product line and advanced the R&D of a new generation of microbial products. In February 2025, American agrochemical company AMVAC signed a regional distribution agreement with DPH Biologicals, incorporating DPH's biostimulant/biological fertilizer product lines (such as TerraTrove and BellaTrove series) into AMVAC's GreenSolutions platform for promotion in the U.S. market. With the help of AMVAC's channels, DPH's innovative biostimulants have gained access to a wider range of growers. This kind of strategic cooperation is far more than simple product line expansion; its core is to create a unique advantage that is difficult for others to imitate and form a "moat" for itself. Specifically, it is reflected in three aspects: a. Technical synergy: connecting the closed loop of "discovery-R&D-application"; b. Channel synergy: realizing cross-selling of "traditional chemicals" and "biological solutions"; c. Strategic synergy: reshaping the industry pattern from "confrontation" to "integration".

Sustainability indicators drive the transformation from "yield-oriented" to "value-oriented". The United Nations SDGs, EU Green Deal, and carbon neutrality goals are promoting the upgrading of the evaluation system for agricultural inputs. In the future, product competitiveness will depend not only on yield-increasing effects but also on quantifiable indicators such as carbon emission reduction, nitrogen use efficiency, and soil organic matter improvement. According to a Rabobank survey, more than 70% of large European food companies have taken "carbon and soil health" on the supply side as a selection criterion when purchasing raw materials. Therefore, inputs that can provide "green output certification" will enjoy a higher premium in the market.

Conclusion: Synergistic Win-Win to Start a New Journey of Green Agriculture

Against the backdrop of the normalization of extreme climate, the logic of agricultural inputs has been completely restructured - they are no longer single fertilizers or "pesticides" but systematic solutions integrating multiple functions. The synergetic combination of nutrition × plant protection is reshaping the logic of inputs and has become an industry consensus.

For regulatory authorities: It is recommended to further improve the regulatory framework, distinguish biological inputs from traditional chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and provide independent positioning and green certification channels to encourage more innovative products to enter the market. For enterprises: Enterprises should proactively build synergetic innovation platforms, accelerate the integration of technology and channels, and form ecological alliances with scientific research institutions, distributors, and farmers to transform from single product sales to the output of integrated solutions. For farmers: The synergetic solution of nutrition and plant protection can simultaneously achieve yield increase, stress resistance, and disease prevention through one application, reducing the number of inputs and costs, and improving crop benefits and quality, making it a more feasible and economical choice.

The future of agricultural competition is essentially the competition of systematic solutions. Only enterprises that can respond to the multiple challenges of climate, regulations, and markets through multi-dimensional integration will be able to take the leading position in the new pattern of green agriculture.