Bioinput Markets and Iran’s Saline Soil Prospects
The Bio-Inputs Market in the Middle East and North Africa and Iran’s Opportunity in Biofertilizers, Biostimulants, and Biocontrol
Agriculture in the Middle East and North Africa is facing a simple but costly question more than ever before: how can production remain economically viable with less water, more saline soils, and growing pressure to reduce the use of chemical inputs? The answer cannot be found only in increasing fertilizer use or expanding cultivated area, because a major part of today’s constraints is tied to soil quality, water stress, low input efficiency, and environmental risk. Bio-inputs become important at precisely this point, because they seek to activate part of the relationship among the plant, soil, root, microorganisms, and farm management. This market gains real value only when its effect in the field is visible, repeatable, and economically viable.
The three main families in this market should be separated from one another from the outset. A biofertilizer is a product that contains live or active microorganisms and supports plant nutrition through mechanisms such as nitrogen fixation, phosphorus solubilization, root development, or changes in the rhizosphere. A plant biostimulant, under the European Union framework, is not itself a plant nutrient; rather, it stimulates natural nutritional processes and can improve nutrient-use efficiency, tolerance to abiotic stress, or crop quality. Biocontrol, by contrast, falls within the domain of pest and disease management and is more closely linked to pesticide and plant-protection regulations.
This distinction has practical importance for market development, because farmers judge a product based on its field effect, while regulators evaluate it based on its registered claim. A product that claims to improve nutrition or stress tolerance is placed, in many systems, on the path of fertilizers, soil improvers, or biostimulants. A product that claims to control a pest or disease, even if it has a biological origin, usually enters the registration pathway for pesticides or plant-protection products. Ignoring this boundary affects time to market, testing costs, safety requirements, and consumer trust.
– Lifeng Li, Director of FAO’s Land and Water Division, and Jorge Batlle-Sales, Chair of INSAS: “This report outlines strategies for reclaiming salt-affected agricultural soils, including saline agriculture and salinity bioremediation.”
How Do Soil Salinity and Water Scarcity Create Demand for Bio-Inputs in the Region?
The starting point of demand in the region is the soil and water crisis. FAO has stated that 1.381 billion hectares, equivalent to 10.7 percent of the world’s land surface, are affected by salinity, and another one billion hectares are at risk. For the Middle East and North Africa, this figure is not merely an environmental indicator; it is a sign of direct pressure on farm economics, because salinity disrupts water and nutrient uptake and reduces the effectiveness of conventional fertilization. In severely saline soils, FAO has reported yield losses of up to 70 percent in some crops, such as rice or beans, and this reality strengthens the technical basis for demand for anti-stress biostimulants, halotolerant PGPRs, and biological solutions for rhizosphere improvement.
Under such conditions, biostimulants and certain groups of plant-growth-promoting bacteria that become active in the rhizosphere are not merely retail fertilizer supplements. Their role becomes meaningful when they can improve plant tolerance to abiotic stress, root development, nutrient uptake, or water-use efficiency under real field and greenhouse conditions. This effect must be analyzed with caution, because plant response depends on the strain, crop, soil, water, temperature, and the farmer’s management practices. Even so, the simultaneous pressure of salinity and water scarcity in the region has created a setting in which bio-inputs have moved from being a research topic to becoming a commercial and regulatory issue.
Iran should also be read within this same framework. FAO places Iran, alongside Afghanistan, Australia, Argentina, China, Kazakhstan, Russia, the United States, Sudan, and Uzbekistan, among the 10 countries that collectively contain 70 percent of the world’s saline soils. This data is important for framing Iran’s opportunity, but it should not be interpreted as evidence of a ready and established market for biofertilizers, biostimulants, or biocontrol. The more precise meaning is that there is a technical necessity for biological stress management, and turning that necessity into commercial demand requires credible products, field trials, a quality system, and a clear registration pathway.
– Dr. Yousef Al-Hafiz, Research Partnerships Consultant at Saudi Arabia’s National Livestock and Fisheries Development Program: “Biostimulants are an innovative solution for improving soil health and strengthening food security in desert regions.”
Biofertilizers and Biostimulants Build a Market Only When Their Field Effects Are Repeatable!
The most important gap between a scientific idea and a commercial market in bio-inputs is the repeatability of the effect. The Saudi government’s Estidamah trial on greenhouse cucumbers shows how this gap should be measured through data. In this trial, water stress was defined as a 30 percent reduction in irrigation water, and the addition of bacterial biofertilizers produced, on average, a 12.2 percent increase in yield under water-stress conditions and an 8.6 percent increase under normal irrigation. This data is valuable, but its scope is clear: one crop, one greenhouse system, a few specific isolates, and controlled research conditions.
The details of the same trial show why bio-inputs must be developed with a crop-specific and climate-specific approach. Three isolates developed at KAUST, including Cronobacter muytiensii JZ38, Enterobacter sp. SA187, and Pseudomonas argentinensis SA190, were evaluated, and the K3 treatment under water stress recorded a yield of 22.6 kg/m² compared with 19.5 kg/m² in the control. In the water-use efficiency measure, K3 under water stress was reported at around 17 L/kg, while the control was 18.9 L/kg. Such figures are important for product design, because they show that economic advantage does not come only from higher yield and can also be related to better water productivity.
A field study in Egypt on onion and potato shows another angle of the market. In two winter 2022/2023 field trials conducted in clay-loam soil, a combination of biofertilizer with 75 percent NPK was evaluated alongside a 100 percent NPK control. In onion, yields for 100 percent NPK and EM were reported at 41.5 and 44.1 t/ha, respectively. Mycorrhiza recorded 36.8 t/ha, while the lowest yield was 29.5 t/ha. These results point to the possibility of reducing part of NPK use under specific conditions, but directly generalizing them to all crops, all soils, or Iran is not scientifically defensible.
The mode of action of biofertilizers in the Egyptian study was explained through increases in bacterial, fungal, and actinomycete populations, as well as mycorrhizal colonization in the soil. This explanation matters for designing the next generation of products, because a biological product is not just the formulation inside the bottle; it must survive in the rhizosphere, become active, and establish an effective interaction with the root. The market accepts this technology when farmers can see and repeat its effect in the field. Therefore, product credibility depends on a package of formulation, crop compatibility, usage instructions, quality control, and after-sales technical support.
Defining the Market’s Safety Boundary Through Biocontrol and Microbial Pesticide Regulations
Biocontrol has a more sensitive pathway compared with biofertilizers and biostimulants, because it deals directly with the control of pests or diseases. The OECD guidance on the registration requirements for microbial pesticides is a 51-page document published to harmonize data requirements for microbial plant-protection products. The importance of this document for the Middle East and North Africa market is that it moves product quality and safety from the level of promotional claims to the level of a technical dossier. A microbial product must be evaluated in terms of strain identification, pathogenicity, toxicity, microbial contamination, effects on non-target organisms, and issues such as antimicrobial resistance.
This framework shows that the biological nature of a product alone does not mean that it is low-risk or exempt from registration. OECD describes the purpose of its microbial guidance as facilitating access to lower-risk tools compatible with integrated pest management, but such access is reasonable only when risks are managed through assessable data. For producers, this means that the biocontrol pathway must be designed around safety and efficacy requirements from the very beginning. For regulators, it means that fertilizer claims, growth-stimulation claims, and pest-control claims should not be placed inside one ambiguous administrative pathway.
The European Union also helps clarify this distinction from another angle. Within the framework of CE-marked fertilizing products, biostimulants are positioned closer to fertilizing products than to most plant-protection products because of their nutritional and stress-tolerance objectives. This distinction matters for Iran and other countries in the region, because the registration pathway for biofertilizers and biostimulants should not be mixed with the pathway for biological pesticides. Clarity of claims is the first condition for reducing market risk; without it, producers, consumers, and regulatory authorities each view the product from a different angle.
The Condition for Commercializing Bio-Inputs: A Quality Chain and Heat-Resistant Formulation
Commercializing a bio-input in the Middle East and North Africa is not limited to finding an effective strain or producing an active ingredient. Regional sources on North Africa have pointed to the vulnerability of biofertilizers to UV radiation and temperatures above 30°C, which shows that the supply chain is part of the product’s technology. If the live population declines during storage, transport, or use, a product that performed well in the laboratory or pilot phase will not create a reliable effect in the field. Therefore, quality control must consider live population counts, contamination testing, transport temperature, expiration date, packaging, and user training together.
The development of algae-based biostimulants in Saudi Arabia is an example of an institutional move from the idea stage toward scalable production. KAUST has announced that it is collaborating with the National Livestock and Fisheries Development Program and Estidamah to develop algae-based biostimulants, and that an industrial-scale algae facility is operating and producing several tons of algae per month. According to the same university source, each kilogram of algae can produce up to 20 liters of biostimulant. This data is useful for understanding technical scale, but it is still not a substitute for registration trials, independent performance data, and farm-level economic evaluation.
– Dr. Khalid Al-Ruwaili, Director General of Estidamah: “KAUST has established itself as a reference point for algae science in Saudi Arabia, and we are benefiting from its expertise.”
This type of collaboration shows the importance of the institutional model. A technology university can develop knowledge around strains, algae, formulation, or testing; a government center can provide a greenhouse testing and validation environment; and the agricultural sector can define the consumption pathway. For a region facing heat, evaporation, salinity, and water limitations, a biological product must be designed from the outset for the target climate. Otherwise, importing a version that worked in a temperate climate may cause the product to lose its effect in the region’s hot and high-stress supply chain.
– Sir Edward Byrne, President of KAUST: “Biostimulants are another pathway KAUST is pursuing to position Saudi Arabia in food science.”
How Does Venture Capital Support the Mycorrhiza and Agricultural Technology Market?
The global bio-inputs market does not move only through research funding; it needs capital that understands scientific, regulatory, and farm-adoption risk. The example of Groundwork BioAg shows how venture capital and corporate venture capital can enter this field. In 2022, the company raised $18 million in Series B funding, with investors such as Climate Innovation Capital, HSBC Asset Management, BASF Venture Capital, and Edaphon participating. The importance of this example for the region is not in the amount of capital alone, but in the type of capital that has moved closer to the commercialization of mycorrhiza, fertilizer efficiency, and climate agriculture.
The core technology in this example is presented as mycorrhizal inoculation to improve phosphorus uptake, fertilizer efficiency, and soil carbon capacity. However, the company’s performance figures and carbon claims should be independently verified and should not be treated as general facts about the market. The usable point is the business model: a bio-input becomes attractive to investors when it can connect both to the farmer’s economic return and to environmental agendas such as reducing pressure on chemical fertilizers or improving soil carbon. This connection turns the product from a small farm input into part of an agricultural technology strategy.
– Dr. Yossi Kofman, Co-Founder and CEO of Groundwork BioAg: “Our mycorrhizal platform is designed for farmers’ economic returns and durable on-farm carbon storage.”
A climate investor in this field looks for technology that can deliver commercial and environmental impact in a shorter time frame. This logic is compatible with the Middle East and North Africa market, because the region’s water and soil crisis is long-standing, and farmers pay for a product when its effect can be seen in yield, quality, or risk reduction. At the same time, the entry of corporate venture capital such as BASF Venture Capital shows that large agricultural companies see AgTech and bio-inputs as part of their global priorities. For Iran, the main message is that investment in bio-inputs remains a high-risk technology play without field data and a regulatory dossier.
– Nelson Switzer, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at ClimateIC: “We look for commercial solutions with the greatest decarbonization potential in the shortest time, and Groundwork aligns with that.”
– Markus Solibieda, Managing Director of BASF Venture Capital GmbH: “Agricultural technology is one of our main global investment priorities at BASF Venture Capital.”
Iran’s Opportunity in Bio-Inputs Depends on Scientific Localization and Field Data
Iran’s opportunity in the bio-inputs market must be described in conditional and precise terms. The presence of salinity, water scarcity, and an arid climate strengthens the technical need for biofertilizers, anti-stress biostimulants, and biological rhizosphere solutions, but technical need is not the same as existing commercial demand. A market forms when producers can build stable, registrable, and transportable products, and when farmers can experience their effect under their own field conditions. Therefore, Iran’s starting point is not a claim about market share or certain exports; it is the construction of an evidence chain for specific products in specific soils and climates.
The likely localization pathway begins with the isolation of native halotolerant and drought-tolerant strains, but it does not stop there. A strain must be tested in several crops, several soils, and several levels of salinity and water stress, and then be converted into a formulation that can withstand heat and the transport chain. Saudi Arabia’s experience with water stress and Egypt’s experience combining biofertilizer with 75 percent NPK provide only cautious comparisons for Iran, not ready-made models. The value of this comparison lies in the fact that product design must be based on the region’s real problems, and its effect must be measured through indicators such as yield, water-use efficiency, and live population stability.
For Iran, the main risk is unstable field performance. The interaction among strain, soil, crop, water, salinity, temperature, and farmer management can change the result of one treatment from one field to another. For this reason, a successful bio-input is not merely a factory-made product; it also requires technical services, usage training, region-specific application instructions, and post-sale monitoring. If these links are removed, the likelihood of reduced farmer trust increases, and the market, instead of growing gradually on the basis of evidence, becomes trapped in scattered and non-repeatable experiences.
The lack of publicly verifiable data on market size, production capacity, the number of registered products, and annual sales in Iran is itself a strategic issue. This shortage should not be converted into undocumented claims about export advantage or market share; rather, it should lead to the design of a data system, testing platforms, transparent registration of product claims, and the publication of reviewable results. For holding companies and technology investors, such data functions as a risk-reduction tool. Without it, decisions about production, technology imports, investment in formulation, or entry into biocontrol become overly dependent on broad narratives.
Iran’s Execution Roadmap for Turning Saline-Soil Necessity into a Trustworthy Market
Turning saline-soil necessity into a trustworthy market requires an execution sequence. First, the product claim must be selected precisely: nutrition and nutrient-use efficiency, abiotic stress tolerance, or pest and disease control. Then the registration pathway must be aligned with that same claim, and trials must be designed based on the crop, climate, and actual use. This order prevents the mixing of biofertilizer, biostimulant, and biocontrol categories and reduces the later costs of correcting dossiers, consumer distrust, and regulatory ambiguity.
The second step is to build a pilot network in crops with clearly defined problems. Greenhouses facing water stress, field crops in saline soils, crops dependent on NPK use, and systems that require integrated pest management can each serve as a different testing platform. In every pilot, indicators such as yield, water-use efficiency, changes in fertilizer use, crop quality, microorganism survival, and effect stability across several cropping cycles should be recorded. These indicators create a shared language among producers, farmers, investors, and registration authorities.
The third step is to develop the quality chain. A biological product must remain as stable as possible against heat, light, storage time, and user error, and its usage instructions must be written for the farmer’s real conditions. In climates where temperatures above 30°C and UV exposure can threaten the live population, packaging, transport, storage, and seller training are part of the technology. The bio-inputs market becomes sustainable when field effect, production quality, and regulatory logic are managed at the same time.
The practical conclusion for Iran is clear: the opportunity exists, but it sits between climatic necessity and market readiness. Soil salinity and water scarcity have turned stress-resistant biofertilizers and biostimulants into a serious issue, and the OECD framework shows that biocontrol must be developed with strict attention to safety and compatibility with integrated pest management. The examples of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Groundwork BioAg show different pathways through government research, field testing, and venture capital. Iran’s precise path does not begin with large market claims; it begins with measurable pilots, climate-resistant formulation, transparent claim registration, and the production of data that farmers and investors can trust.
