From fermentation tanks to field soils, most microbial inoculants face barriers they can’t overcome.
Farmers and agronomists have never had more soil inoculant products to choose from. Marketed as biologicals, these products contain live microbes meant to improve soil biology and crop performance. Yet whether a company sells single-organism products or complex mixtures, bacterial inoculants or fungi, every product faces the same test: do the microbes survive long enough to benefit the crop? Research shows that most do not. Four compounding obstacles explain why (Kaminsky et al., 2019).
We Can Only Use a Tiny Fraction of Soil Microbes