BTU y BINFIELD lanzan un fertilizante NPK con recubrimiento microbiano tras cinco años de desarrollo.
BTU y BINFIELD have completed a five-year development cycle and launched industrial production of a product made using Microbial Coating technology — the even application of a consortium of beneficial microorganisms directly onto granules of mineral NPK. It is one of the few cases in which the biological component is not added to the fertilizer “in the tank,” but integrated into it at the production stage — and has gone the full way from a laboratory strain to a commercial product.
Project timeline
2020. BTU (a biotech company with its own microorganism collection) and BINFIELD (a mineral fertilizer producer) set a shared goal — to create a complex fertilizer that not only contains N, P and K but also activates the availability of these elements from the soil’s own reserves. The idea: to integrate phosphorus- and potassium-mobilizers directly into the granule.
2020–2024. The R&D stage. More than ten strains were screened in BTU’s microorganism museum. The final microbial consortium comprises five species: Bacillus subtilis y Bacillus licheniformis, Paenibacillus mucilaginosus y Paenibacillus polymyxa, y Priestia megaterium. Each group plays its own role: the bacilli stimulate plant growth and immunity, act as antagonists of pathogenic fungi and bacteria, and mobilize phosphorus; the Paenibacillus strains produce phosphatase, phytohormones and a broad spectrum of lytic enzymes; Priestia megaterium releases phosphorus from bound forms and produces silicase, an enzyme that increases the mobility of silicon and potassium. In parallel, the application technology was refined: how to distribute the consortium evenly across the surface of the granule, how to keep the bacteria viable within the finished fertilizer, and how to make the process reproducible at industrial volumes.
The key technological decision was the use of spore forms of bacteria. Thanks to their multilayer coat, the spores withstand the osmotic pressure within the mineral fertilizer and remain viable for up to 12 months across a temperature range of 6 to 30 °C. This means the product can be stored and transported under conditions typical for agriculture.
2024–2025. Field trials under varying soil and climatic conditions. A consistent yield gain was recorded: soybean — +0.25 t/ha, corn (maize) — +0.3 t/ha, winter wheat — +0.35 t/ha, sunflower — +0.3 t/ha. The results were confirmed by combine yield mapping.
2025. The launch of industrial production. The development took commercial form under the name FERTIS ACTIVE NPK.
Why it matters for the industry
The coating of bioagents onto the granule is a different principle of working with soil resources. Instead of increasing the fertilizer application rate, it makes it possible to raise the use efficiency of nutrients that are already in the soil but locked away from plants in hard-to-access forms. The flexibility of the technology allows it to be adapted to different fertilizer grades and the composition of the microbial consortium to be customized to the agrochemical profile of a specific soil.
“The joint project with BINFIELD confirmed that combining a mineral fertilizer and a microbiological component in a single product gives growers a new level of efficiency. For BTU, it is confirmation that biological solutions can be not an add-on, but a full-fledged part of modern agricultural technologies,” said Vladyslav Bolokhovskyi, CEO and co-founder of the BTU Biotech Company.
“Five years of work proved the main point: the technology works not only in the laboratory and not only on a single crop. Within one field operation, the grower receives both quality fertilization and improved availability of nutrients from the soil’s reserves,” said Oleksiy Hrabovskyi, Director of Agro-Service and co-founder of BINFIELD.
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