QUALITY
CURRENT STATUS OF BIOSTIMULANTS IN RELATION TO EUROPEAN LEGISLATION
Intra Radice S.L. is a laboratory providing microbiological services for the agroforestry sector, in line with the sector’s new regulations.
Definition of Biostimulants (EU Regulation 2019/1009): This introduces, for the first time, a category separate from traditional fertilisers. It defines biostimulants as substances or microorganisms that improve nutrient uptake, tolerance to biotic or abiotic stress, or agronomic characteristics, irrespective of their nutrient content.
New European Plant Protection Framework (Proposal of June 2022):
• Binding legal framework: The European Commission proposed a new Regulation on the sustainable use of plant protection products to replace Directive 2009/128/EC and align with the EU Green Deal, the Biodiversity Strategy, and the Farm to Fork Strategy.
• Key objectives: It sets a 50 per cent reduction in the use and risk of chemical pesticides by 2030, mandates integrated pest management, and imposes a total ban on pesticides in sensitive areas.
• Purpose: It aims to reduce the environmental footprint of the food system and mitigate economic losses caused by climate change, biodiversity loss, and soil degradation.
Against this backdrop of legislative developments, a far-reaching regulatory change has taken place in the sector. Standard EN 17722 (adopted in Spain as UNE-EN 17722) has come into force, completely replacing the provisional technical specification CEN/TS 17722:2022 (which was previously ratified at national level as UNE-CEN/TS 17722:2022).
Validated method: The transition to a European Standard (EN) means that the protocol has undergone a rigorous validation and intercomparison phase involving multiple European laboratories, thereby becoming the definitive and mandatory standard.This change in acronym and definitive implementation represents a major step forward for the sector for the following reasons:
From Provisional Specification to European Standard
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Legal consolidation: The 2022 “TS” (Technical Specifications) were fast-track provisional documents issued by CEN to ensure that laboratories and manufacturers had immediate measurement tools when Regulation (EU) 2019/1009 came into force. The new official European standard EN 17722 replaces and supersedes this provisional specification.
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Validated method: The transition to a European Standard (EN) means that the protocol has undergone a rigorous validation and intercomparison phase involving multiple European laboratories, thereby becoming the definitive and mandatory standard.
Technical Impact on Mycorrhizal Biostimulants
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Official count: The new EN 17722 provides a horizontal method for counting and determining the genus and species of mycorrhizal fungi.
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Control of mixtures: It strictly regulates analytical testing not only of the pure fungus, but also of complex product mixtures (for example, where mycorrhizae are combined with soil improvers, growing media, or traditional fertilisers).
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Legal certainty: When a product is audited by a Notified Body for CE marking, microbiological purity analyses and the 15% tolerance margin must be carried out in accordance with the updated methodological criteria of this final version of the EN standard.
In response to the need for accredited laboratories in these fields of work, operating to the highest quality standards, Intra Radice holds ENAC accreditation (No. 1462/LE2721). We have become the first and only laboratory accredited by ENAC for tests based on the quantification of mycorrhizal fungi in roots (mycorrhization rate), as well as the first laboratory accredited for the quantification of spores in mycorrhizal fungus-based biostimulants (spore count and viability), positioning ourselves as a leader in technology integration and transfer processes.
This technological and regulatory shift will be leveraged by companies in many countries that manufacture and market these biostimulants, enabling them to unequivocally guarantee the quality of their products, as well as to certify whether, during use, the selected fungi have successfully colonised the roots of crops under the scope of the new European standardisation.
