"Fulvic and Humic-like compounds” from biomass as biostimulant: understanding the biostimulant mechanisms to reach a new way to close the organic matter cycle

Currently, we are facing several challenges due to growing of human population and consequently agricultural intensification in response to increasing demand of food and resources. In this way the biostimulant products (based on humic compounds) seem promising to increase the plant productivity by acting on the nutrient and water-use efficiency, as well as stress resistance (Cannellas et al., 2015). The commercial biostimulants are now produced by leonardite extraction, but the production of them from biomass is very interesting in a circular bioeconomy point of view. The organic composition of alkaline hydrolysates of biowaste, recently produced, suggests their use as plant biostimulant, but the knowledge of their hormone-like activity is now poorly understood (Montoneri et al.)