Dealing with Plant Bioregulators: an Industrial View

Worldwide, plant bioregulators account for only approximately 2.5% of the total sales of products used in plant protection. This limited market potential, enormous costs for development and registration, and the demand for high sales and profitability have created major constraints to the introduction of new plant bioregulators. However, it can be assumed that there are still possibilities to successfully introduce new products. Plant bioregulators have become an integral part of modern agricultural, horticultural and viticultural practice. New and improved products for dormancy breaking and better thinning agents seem to be most urgently needed for use in fruit trees, while most other indications appear to be relatively well covered with existing products. At present, no major new introductions of plant bioregulators are in sight. In principle, plant breeding may also lead to solutions, which are currently covered by applying plant bioregulators. However, any genotype will lack the flexibility by which plant bioregulators can be used to optimize plant development under given growing conditions.