Biologicals take the next step

Hosted by Meister Media Worldwide and its American Fruit Grower, American Vegetable Grower, and Greenhouse Grower brands and sponsored by Certis Biologicals and Valent, the event was a welcome opportunity for growers, crop advisors, educators, and suppliers to reconnect and share solutions to their most pressing production challenges.

While it has been two years since the last Biocontrols USA event due to the pandemic, developments in biologicals and related specialty crop technologies have continued, making this year's conference an especially fertile environment for education and networking.

Sustainability and technology were a uniting thread that ran through both the Conference program and the Expo, where nearly 30 suppliers shared updates on innovative new products. For growers and crop consultants, the benefits of softer, more targeted materials for their crop protection and plant and soil health programs are much more widely accepted in 2022. And that trend perfectly aligns with a growing focus from consumers who are making their expectations for sustainably produced food, flowers, and other products clear. Biologicals are an obvious fit serving both growers and their customers with those goals in mind.

The conference was headlined by an engaging keynote from biologicals industry veteran Dr. Pam Marrone, founder and former CEO of Marrone Bio Innovations and current Director of Chestnut Bio Advisors. Marrone, who now works with agtech and agbio startups, detailed many of the advances that have taken place in the biologicals space in recent years. She asserted that developments there should be viewed in coordination with many of the developments happening in other areas of agriculture. The next big steps, she said, will come when we start tying all the pieces together.

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Source: Greenhouse Grower