Biostimulants as ecological horizon for a sustainable agriculture

Synthetic fertilizers play a crucial role in modern agriculture, where their use is increased to maintain higher yields. Nonetheless, the abuse of their use is leading to the degradation of the ecosystem, the alteration of soil health and the pollution of aquatic resources. Natural biostimulants are a promising eco-friendly innovation in the agricultural sector. They are implemented to enhance plant growth and productivity and to mitigate abiotic stresses, through a more vigorous root system. Biostimulants increment resource use efficiency and boost qualitative parameters of produced crops. Several biostimulants have proved beneficial effects when applied on fruit vegetables like tomato, eggplant and zucchini, and on leafy vegetables like rocket, lamb's lettuce and lettuce. The use of different biostimulants like protein hydrolysates, tropical plants extracts and seaweed extracts demonstrated to be an adequate means to increase yield in sub-optimal and optimal conditions, in addition to upgrading the qualitative parameters of crops and enhancing nutrient uptake and use efficiency. Biostimulants boost the growth of root systems and render the confined nutrients available. These products complement synthetic fertilizers and allow the decrease of their excessive use. Therefore, biostimulants use leads to a sustainable crop production and eventually to resilient agro-ecosystems, but nevertheless leads to better net returns and products with higher qualitative aspects.