前言：
分享一篇对英国Plater Bio公司的技术总监和创始人Russell Sharp博士的采访，Plater Bio是他在2016年创建的生物刺激素公司，旨在将新型农业化学解决方案商业化，以应对农业面临的主要挑战。
本篇文章，讨论了他的职业生涯以及他认为是什么引发了目前生物兴奋剂市场的繁荣话题。同时包含其对生物刺激剂行业发展现状的分析，对行业未来走向的看法，以及该如何找到并说服合适的分销商？产品推广与知识产权保护如何平衡？微量营养元素和生物刺激剂之间的关系？以及其产品在商业化方面所面临的瓶颈……
By Jackie Pucci, Russell Sharp
Q: 你能分享一些关于你的背景和你如何看待生物兴奋剂市场的发展的细节吗?
Question: Can you share some details about your background and how you have seen the biostimulant market evolve?
拉塞尔·夏普: 我一直对植物很着迷。我十几岁时是利物浦植物学会的一员，后来成为一名学生、博士生、博士后和植物科学讲师。如果这还不够的话，我已经花了很多假期去寻找稀奇古怪的植物，并在遥远的地方研究它们的生物学。
Russell Sharp: I have always been obsessed with plants. I was a member of the Liverpool Botanical Society as a teenager and then went on to be a student, doctoral student, post doc, and lecturer in Plant Science. Then if that wasn’t enough, I have spent many a vacation hunting weird and wacky plants and studying their biology in far-flung places.
我的学术研究生涯专注于将纯植物科学转化为解决英国商业园艺和农业行业挑战的方案。其中包括研究能够调节植物生长和健康的微生物生物刺激素产品的作用模式。
My academic research career focused on translating pure plant science into solutions for challenges in the commercial horticulture and agriculture industry in the UK. This included studying the mode of action of microbial biostimulant products that modulate plant growth and health.
2014年，我离开学术界进入生物兴奋剂领域，因为我看到，这是一个快速扩张的领域，也是一个植物生理学家可以利用他们的技能来提高作物产量的领域。
In 2014 I left academia to enter the biostimulants sector as I could see that this was an area of rapid expansion and a sector where plant physiologists could use their skills to make a real difference to improve crop yields.
尽管生物刺激素已经使用了几十年，但从2010年开始,该行业发生了滚雪球式的发展:
1)新技术被开发
2)投资者越来越认为这是一个好的投资领域
3) 由于大宗商品价格不断下跌，传统农用化学品(杀虫剂和肥料)表现出较低的增长率。
While biostimulants have been used for many decades, it was from 2010 that the industry began to snowball due to a combination of: 1) new technologies being developed, 2) investors increasingly seeing it as a good area to invest, and 3) traditional agchem (pesticides and fertilizers) showing lower growth rates due to falling commodity prices.
生物兴奋剂市场发展迅速，在过去10年里成立了许多公司。然而，许多产品非常相似，因此差异化是目前该领域的主要挑战。另一个主要挑战是法规，许多新法规出现，或将在大多数主要地区实施，以覆盖那些传统农化产品注册计划范围以外的产品。
The biostimulants market has grown rapidly, with many companies being formed in the last 10 years. However, many of the products are very similar, and so differentiation is currently the major challenge in this sector. Another major challenge is regulation, with many new regulations appearing, or set to be implemented in most major regions to cover products that previously were outside the scope of traditional agchem registration schemes.
Q: 是什么让你创立了Plater Bio?
Question: What brought you to founding Plater Bio?
RS:我之前在两家生物刺激素公司工作过，很快就获悉了这个行业成功或失败的必要条件。在这些公司里，我发现自己从开发新产品(我的激情)转向确保销售目标的实现。因此，我决定支持自己，创建一家公司，将我的创意商业化的转化为产品。我知道，我的产品是创新的、新颖的，也是行业所需要的。
RS: I have previously worked for two biostimulant companies and very rapidly learnt what was required to succeed or fail in the industry. In these companies I found myself being drawn away from developing new products (my passion) towards ensuring sales targets were met. As such, I decided to back myself and create a company to commercialize my ideas for products which I knew were innovative, novel and needed in the industry.
我与英国独立化工公司Plater Group的团队进行了交谈。虽然Plater在农化领域并没有真正的背景，但是他们拥有创造我想要的产品所需的所有原材料和设备，所以和他们合作是非常匹配的。当我们对我们将要开发的产品类型有了想法以后，自从我们建立Plater Bio以来，我们现在已经完全将精力集中在产品开发上。
I talked to the team at Plater Group, who are an independent UK chemical company. While Plater had no real background in agchem, they had all the raw materials required and facilities to create the products I had in mind, so it was a great match to partner with them. While we had an idea for the types of products we would develop, we have now pivoted completely to concentrate on products developed since we set up Plater Bio.
我们现在专注于两大产品。第一种是Gold Leaf，它是世界上第一种含有所有必需营养素的液体肥料。这在全球农业和园艺的所有部门都有巨大的潜力，所以我花了很多时间寻找分销商，在不同的国家试用这种产品。我们关注的第二个产品是基于壳聚糖的鱼胶的纯素替代品。该产品在欧盟也可作为生物杀菌剂使用。
We are now focusing on two major products. The first, Gold Leaf, is the world’s first liquid fertilizer to contain every essential nutrient. This has massive potential globally in all sectors of agriculture and horticulture, so I spend most of my days finding distributors to trial this product in different countries. The second product we focus on is a vegan alternative to isinglass based on chitosan. This product can also be used as a biofungicide in the EU.
Q: 你认为有什么特别的事件或产品真正导致了我们今天看到的繁荣吗?
Question: Is there one particular event or product that you think really led to the boom that we are seeing today?
RS:这是一个有趣的问题。生物兴奋剂市场的主导产品是海藻提取物。然而，海藻提取物已经存在了几十年，海藻肥料已经存在了几千年，所以它不可能是当前海藻繁荣的原因。同样的道理也适用于微生物产品，今天销售的许多产品与1980- 90年代的产品种类相同。
RS: That is an interesting question. The dominant product in the biostimulant market is seaweed extract. However, seaweed extracts have been around for decades and seaweed fertilizer for millennia, so it cannot be the cause of the current boom. The same is true of microbial products, with many of the products on sale today being the same species as available in the 1980-'90s.
所以我想说，对微生物及其提取物产品如何工作的科学理解，以及如何对它们进行提炼和修饰以生产有效产品，才是当前繁荣背后的真正原因。这通常会涉及到专利，反过来，投资者在投资拥有专利的公司时，也会比投资那些市场份额受到专业知识保护的公司时感觉更舒服。
So I would say the current boom is a result of a boom in scientific understanding in how microbials and extract-based products work, and how they can be refined and modified to produce effective products. This often led to patents, and in turn investors feeling more comfortable in investing in companies with patents than they do in those where their market share is protected by know-how.
金砖四国在过去20年的崛起也促进了生物兴刺激剂行业的发展。中国是海藻提取物和甲壳素的主要生产国，印度是微生物产品商业化的热土。这导致了许多新的生物刺激剂出现，生产能力的大幅提升，以及来自这些国家农场的巨大的市场。因为，在这些国家，生物兴奋剂能够帮助农民在压力大的条件下(如盐碱地)种植作物。
The rise of the BRIC nations in the last two decades has also helped the biostimulant industry. China is a major producer of seaweed extract and chitin, and India is a hot-bed for the commercialization of microbial products. This is has led to a host of new biostimulants, a massive uplift in production capacity, and a major market on farms in these countries where biostimulants are able to assist farmers growing crops in stressful conditions (e.g., saline soils).
Q: 在你的研究中，有没有什么是你发现的特别有前途的生物兴奋剂，但还没有上市?
Question: Is there anything in your research you’ve found that is especially promising as a biostimulant and isn’t yet on the market?
RS:我们正在Plater Bio开展的研究项目中有一些非常令人兴奋的领域，包括微量营养素的自然螯合。然而，我现在还不能谈论这些!
RS: There are a number of areas we are looking at in the Plater Bio pipeline that are very exciting and involve natural chelation of micronutrients. However, I cannot talk about these just yet!
一旦一家公司拥有了一项可行的技术，它通常就会由分销商负责将其推向市场。除非公司准备直接销售产品。因此，目前在商业化方面存在着一个主要的瓶颈，即分销商评估新技术优点的能力。
Once a company has a working technology, it is then normally in the hands of a distributor to take it to the market. That is unless the company is prepared to market and sell the product directly. As such, there is currently a major bottleneck to commercialization relating to the ability of distributors to assess the merits of new technology.
分销商需要能够区分出那些“我也是”的公司之间的差异，看穿夸张的宣传，发现真正的创新技术，这将为他们和他们的客户带来利润。例如会有数百家公司在贸易展上销售海藻提取物。在这种情况下，我不想成为一个试图区分他们所有人的买家！因此，像Plater Bio这样的公司面临的主要挑战是找到并说服合适的分销商，我们的技术与大众提供的技术非常不同。
Distributors need able to differentiate between “me too” companies, see past the hyperbole of claims, and uncover the truly innovative technology that will be profitable to them and their customers. A great example is hundreds of companies selling seaweed extract at trade shows. I would not want to be a buyer in that scenario trying to differentiate between them all! As a result, the main challenge for a company like Plater Bio is finding and convincing the right distributor that our technology is very different to that on offer from the crowd.
Q: 你能描述一下微量营养素和生物刺激剂之间的关系，以及这两种产品的共同使用吗？
Question: Can you describe the relationship between micronutrients and biostimulants and the use of the two product types together?
RS:微量营养素和生物兴奋剂之间往往有很强的联系。首先，这些产品的市场和分销商通常是相同的。其次，微量营养素通常与已知的生物兴奋剂（如氨基酸和甘露醇）螯合。第三，某些生物刺激剂的作用模式可以提高微量营养素的营养利用效率，例如从土壤中溶解结合的养分。反过来也是如此，如果没有正确的微量营养素(例如，土壤中对根瘤菌生长所需的充足的钼营养)，一些微生物生物兴奋剂就不能发挥作用。
RS: There is often a strong link between micronutrients and biostimulants. Firstly, the markets and distributors for these products are often the same. Secondly, micronutrients are often chelated with known biostimulants (e.g. amino acids and mannitol). Thirdly, the mode of action of some biostimulants can result in improved nutrient use efficiency of micronutrients, such as solubilizing bound nutrients from soils. The reverse is also true, with some microbial biostimulants not able to function without the correct micronutrients (e.g., the requirement for adequate molybdenum nutrition in the soil for the growth of Rhizobium).
Q: 哪些市场正在为此而增长?
Question: Which markets are growing for these?
RS:生物兴奋剂和微量营养素的主要增长领域是有机生产、水培和高价值园艺。以大田作物是一个主要目标，但从农民投资回报率的角度来看，在大田上将一种产品推向市场更具挑战性——但并非不可能。
RS: Major areas of growth for biostimulants and micronutrients are organic production, hydroponics, and high-value horticulture. Field-based crops are a major target, but getting a product to market where it makes sense from an ROI perspective for the farmer is more challenging — but not impossible.
不总是增长最快的市场应该成为目标。在Plater Bio，我们在英国体育和公共设施领域取得了巨大的成功。这实际上是一个萎缩的市场，但我们提供的优质产品在这个市场上非常受欢迎。
It is not always the fastest growing markets that should be targets. At Plater Bio, we are seeing great success in the sports/amenity sector in the UK. This is actually a shrinking market, but the premium products we offer are being extremely well received in this market.
Q: 在尝试销售科学支持的产品时，你需要记住的最重要的事情是什么？
Question: What is the most important things to remember when trying to sell your science-backed product?
RS:当然，最重要的是要有能力为产品的声明提供支持，并详细讨论产品，同时确保你不会泄露知识产权，以免有人对其进行反向工程。这通常是导致许多生物兴奋剂生产商错误判断的很难区分的界限。通常情况下，公司会过于谨慎，不会透露任何关于他们产品的信息，只提及产品名称。诸如“植物电子学将通过刺激植物代谢过程，使产量增加10%”之类的短语通常是技术数据表上唯一的“科学”，这在说服别人使用您的产品方面几乎没有帮助，来说服经销商相信你们产品的优点也是足够困难的。不告诉他们产品里有什么几乎是不可能的!
RS: Definitely, the most important thing is having the ability to back up the claims for the product and discuss the product in detail, while at the same time ensuring you do not divulge IP that could allow somebody to reverse engineer it. This is often a thin line that is misjudged by many biostimulant producers. More often than not, companies will be over-cautious and not divulge any information about what is in their product and refer only to the product name. Phrases such as, “Phyccotronics will lead to a 10% increase in yield by stimulating plant metabolic processes” are often the only “science” on a technical data sheet, and are of little to no help in convincing somebody to use your product. Convincing distributors of the merits of your product is difficult enough. Not telling them what is in the product makes it near on impossible!
由于农民必须对所有的农作物投入品进行超市或有机认证审计，因此将不愿意把未知化合物施用于他们的作物，所以农民也会放弃使用。
Farmers might also be put off due to them having to submit to supermarket or organic certification audits on all their crop inputs, and so will be reticent to apply unknown compounds to their crops.
By Jackie Pucci, Russell Sharp, 4 May, 2018
Source from AgriBuisinessGlobal
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