Farm Industry News

Compass Minerals Plant Nutrition and Marrone Bio Innovations to work together to create specialty plant nutrition solutions

Compiled by staff

May 16, 2019

2 Min Read
corn healthy crop biologicals nutrients
MAXIMIZING PLANT PERFORMANCE: The new collaboration between Compass Minerals Plant Nutrition and Marrone Bio aims to bring an innovative approach to boosting crop returns.Willie Vogt

There’s growing interest in biologicals as companies seek new modes of action for controlling pests and diseases. Yet there are other ways biologicals can be deployed that may boost plant performance. A new collaboration offers potential to show the market new ways biologicals and plant nutrition products can be teamed for enhanced results.

Compass Minerals Plant Nutrition, a division of Compass Minerals, and Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc., a developer of biological-based products for pest management and plant health announced the two companies have formed a collaboration. The combined work will aim to “develop new specialty plant nutrient products enhanced with microorganisms,” according to the media announcement.

The new products will use patented technologies aiming to help crops take up nutrients more efficiently, to increase crop health and reduce crop stress.

Through the collaboration, Compass Minerals Plant Nutrition will leverage its specialty plant nutrition approach with a subset of Marrone’s novel microbes to create new products. Marrone Bio has a collection of more than 18,000 microorganisms with a range of applications. The collaboration aims to create new value-added products offering growers the potential for improved plant vigor, higher yields and a better return on investment.

Related:Company creates new product category

Ryan Bartlett, vice president of innovation and product development at Compass Minerals, explains that this collaboration “is an important one as we continue to expand our season-long plant nutrition portfolio and build on our history of innovation and leadership in the category with tis unique line of products.”

Earlier this year, Compass Minerals launched a new line of plant nutrition products that created a totally new plant nutrition market category. With bio-based products, there are a range of other potential innovations.

In the joint press statement, the companies point out that microorganisms are known to control pests and plant diseases, increase plant health, growth, crop yields and reduce drought, salt and other stresses. One way the microorganisms boost plant growth is by making key nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and minerals or micronutrients more available to the plant. This can not only help the farmers’ bottom line but be more environmentally friendly by reducing the quantity of excess nutrients not efficiently taken up by the plant.

Adds Pam Marrone, CEO of Marrone Bio: “We have been seeking ways to innovatively leverage our microorganism collection and biologicals development expertise into new and adjacent markets beyond crop protection such as the $155 billion crop nutrition market. We look forward to working with Compass Minerals Plant Nutrition as a partner in the development of exciting new products that don’t exist in the market today.”

Source: Compass Minerals, Marrone Bio. The source is solely responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.

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