BiomaPhos generated R$105 million for the country in 2020 with increased soybean and corn productivity

Since it was launched in August 2019, the first inoculant developed with national technology for absorbing phosphorus by crops is expected to increase the fertility of more than three million hectares of Brazilian soil by the 2021/2022 harvest. The projection is from the company Bioma, belonging to the Simbiose Agro Group, Embrapa's partner in the development and commercialization of the product, and refers to the treatment of corn and soybean crops throughout the country with BiomaPhos.

“In the 2019/2020 harvest, when it was launched, the treated area exceeded 350 thousand hectares. The results were so satisfactory that, in the 2020/2021 harvest, 1,49 million hectares of corn and soybeans received BiomaPhos. Our inoculant sales forecast for the next harvest is to exceed three million hectares”, reveals Artur Soares, Research and Development manager at Grupo Simbiose Agro.

Of 231 soybean areas that received BiomaPhos and were evaluated by Embrapa and Bioma in the last harvest, the average productivity jumped from 67,2 bags per hectare to 71,6 bags, which means an increase of 4,4 bags per hectare provided by the use of the product. “If we consider the price of a bag of soybeans at R$176,00 – data from the last week of April – and discount the cost of the product per hectare (R$70, on average), the producer achieved an average gain of R$704,40 .12 per hectare using BiomaPhos”, assesses the manager. According to him, the assessments were carried out on soybeans in the last summer harvest, and data relating to the second corn harvest will be ready in mid-August. “Just to give you an idea, the average obtained last year for corn was XNUMX more bags per hectare”, he reinforces.

Christiane Paiva, researcher in the Soil Microbiology area at Embrapa Milho e Sorgo (MG), responsible for the research that led to the commercial product, celebrates the results. According to her, productivity gains are also being demonstrated in other crops, such as sugar cane, beans, rice, sorghum, brachiaria and coffee. “Although the product has been available on the market for just over a year, the expansion already signals the possibility of effectively contributing to reducing Brazil's excessive dependence on imported fertilizers”, says the researcher. According to her, in some crops, still in the testing phase, such as potatoes and peanuts, the gains have surprised producers, reaching 30% increases in productivity. 

“These results occurred in crops that did not usually use biological inoculants to increase productivity and better use of nutrients, which makes BiomaPhos a revolutionary product in terms of the use of biological assets in agriculture”, interprets Christiane Paiva. “In crops such as coffee, sorghum, cotton, sugar cane, peanuts, citrus, mango, tomatoes and potatoes, where there was no tradition of using inoculants, the technology has provided real gains after being widely tested and positively evaluated by the producers themselves”, he adds. She adds that Embrapa and public partners are also establishing partnerships to evaluate the inoculant in bananas, wheat, pastures, vegetables, fruit and vegetables, corn for silage and green corn, in addition to analyzing the product's efficiency in the ILPF system.

R$ 105 million returned to the country

The economic impact provided by the inoculant in 2020 across the country reached R$ 105.134.993,00, a value estimated by Embrapa with a methodology that evaluates the impact of its technologies and published in its Social Balance Sheet. This amount shows the profit reverted to Brazil by reducing the import of synthetic mineral fertilizers, replacing them with BiomaPhos. To reach this value, Company researchers carry out analyzes of a quantitative component, which is the economic evaluation itself, and a qualitative component referring to interviews with adopters of the technological solution to capture the socio-environmental impacts and, finally, interviews with asset developers to capture the Institutional Development Impact. 

According to Rubens Augusto de Miranda, an Embrapa researcher in the field of Economics, the economic assessment is made based on an estimate of the area of ​​adoption of the technology, calculated by the number of sales of the asset obtained with the partner company in the development. “The benefit of the technological solution is calculated based on the validation results of the commercial product and extrapolated to the estimated area of ​​adoption. This result subtracted from the costs (price of the commercial product) and the price of the grain (in this case corn) provides an estimate of the economic impact of the technological solution”, explains Miranda. 

According to him, the methodology for evaluating the qualitative component is carried out using Embrapa software. Ambitec-Agro, a system for assessing the environmental impacts of agricultural technological innovations. It is a set of multi-criteria matrices that integrate performance indicators of technological innovations and management practices adopted in carrying out rural activities. The methodology Ambitec-Agro calculates indicators based on the so-called change coefficient, which is the adopter's or researcher's perception in relation to changes that occurred with the use or development of the technological solution in certain indicators, compared to a previous situation. 

Advances in technology and conquest of new markets

Embrapa and the company Bioma have invested in new formulations in the composition of BiomaPhos, in partnership with Embrapa Instrumentação (SP), and in a genomic tool to enable precision and safety, associating more efficiency and longevity to the product. “The success of the inoculant led partner company Bioma to implement new negotiation strategies to expand its access to the market. It even partnered with a large pesticide company to distribute the product in new partnerships. We have also started tests for the future internationalization of the commercialization of BiomaPhos in countries such as Paraguay, Bolivia, Mexico and the United States”, reveals Paiva.

How works

BiomaPhos, the result of more than 19 years of research, is produced from two bacteria identified by Embrapa, one in the soil and the other in corn, which are capable of solubilizing or making available the phosphate element and improving the root system of plants. . This mineral is essential for plant growth and production, as it interferes with the processes of photosynthesis, respiration, energy storage and transfer. “The strains of bacteria Bacillus subtilis e bacillus megaterium They are able to ensure that a greater amount of phosphorus is absorbed by the roots, receiving in exchange fundamental compounds for bacterial growth, such as carbon sources, especially sugars and organic acids”, explains the researcher. “This translates into more efficiency in the process of phosphorus absorption by plant roots, making them more productive”, she adds.