Biofertiliser Pack Sizes Under S.O. 1567(E): What Will Change in the Market and in the Field

What the Notification Says

On 25 March 2026 the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare published S.O. 1567(E) in the Gazette of India. Using sub-clause (c) of clause 21 of the Fertiliser Control Order, 1985 (FCO), it specifies the weight of the bags or packets in which a biofertiliser (biofertilizer) may be packed for sale. It came into force on 1 April 2026.

Biofertiliser	Pack size allowed
Vesicular arbuscular mycorrhiza (VAM)	500 g to 5 kg (100 g for spore-based mycorrhizal formulations)
Carrier-based biofertilisers	200 g to 1 kg
Liquid biofertilisers	50 mL to 1 litre

One clause matters commercially: the notification does not apply to material packed before its publication that is still unsold, until that material's expiry date. Everything packed after that must be in these sizes.

Two points about its form are worth noting. It is a stand-alone notification under clause 21(c), not an amendment of the Order, so it does not appear in the consolidated FCO or in Schedule III. And it gives no reasons. What follows is my reading of what the three rows will do, written first for manufacturers, because they have to change their packing lines before anyone else feels the rule.

A Biofertiliser Is a Population, Not a Powder

A bag of urea holds the same nitrogen in March as in October. A pack of biofertiliser does not. It holds a population of living cells or spores, and that population starts to decline on the day it is packed. The Order recognises this: Schedule III sets a minimum live count (for most bacterial biofertilisers, 5 × 10⁷ colony-forming units per gram of carrier or 1 × 10⁸ per millilitre of liquid) and requires an expiry date on every pack.

How fast the population falls depends on the formulation and on heat. Indian work describes carrier-based products as having a shelf life of about six months and as sensitive to temperatures above 30 °C, with counts falling about a hundredfold in four months, while liquid formulations keep their count longer. In a Punjab study that stored consortium biofertilisers for 300 days at 4 °C and 28 °C, liquid formulations kept higher viable counts than charcoal-based ones at both temperatures.

This is why pack size is a biological question and not only a commercial one. A pack should be opened once, at the time of use, and finished then. Every time a large bag is opened, part-used and put back, the remaining material is exposed to air, moisture and contaminants, and in an Indian summer the shed or shop where it waits is often well above 30 °C. The cells that reach the seed are the cells that survived that wait.

At the minimum count the Order allows, this is what each pack size holds:

Pack	Live content at the FCO minimum
Carrier-based, 200 g	1 × 1010 cells
Carrier-based, 1 kg	5 × 1010 cells
Liquid, 50 mL	5 × 109 cells
Liquid, 1 litre	1 × 1011 cells
VAM, 500 g	5,000 spores; 600,000 infective propagules
VAM, spore-based, 100 g	1,000 spores; 120,000 infective propagules

Reading the Three Rows

Carrier-based: 200 g to 1 kg

This range fits how carrier-based products are actually used. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University's crop guides, for example, treat the seed for a hectare of green gram with one 200 g packet each of Rhizobium and phosphobacteria, and apply 1 kg per acre of each carrier-based biofertiliser to the soil in rainfed cotton. The floor is one seed-treatment packet; the ceiling is one acre of soil application. A 5 or 10 kg sack, opened in June and finished in August, has no place in this range, and biologically that is right.

The cost falls on soil-application products that used to go out in bigger bags, and on granules: the Order writes its counts "per gram of powder, granules or carrier material", so granular products sit in this row and will now leave the factory in 1 kg packs.

Liquid: 50 mL to 1 litre

The floor is generous. The same university treats a hectare of green gram seed with 125 mL of each liquid biofertiliser, so a 50 mL bottle is a real unit of use. The ceiling is where I expect the most friction. Liquid formulations are increasingly applied with farmyard manure and through drip over larger areas (the cotton guide uses 200 mL of each per acre for soil application). From now on, a grower fertigating several acres of sugarcane or banana buys several 1-litre bottles.

The biological case for this ceiling is weaker than for carrier products. A liquid in a sealed container is protected from moisture; the risk lies in a large can opened and used over weeks. A label instruction to use an opened container within a set time, backed by the manufacturer's stability data, would have addressed that risk without multiplying bottles, plastic and packing cost per litre.

VAM: 500 g to 5 kg, or 100 g if spore-based

This is the row I read most closely, because mycorrhiza is at the centre of my own work. The FCO standard for mycorrhizal biofertilisers, in force since 2021, is at least 10 viable spores and 1,200 infective propagules per gram. At that minimum a 500 g pack carries 5,000 spores and 600,000 infective propagules, and a 100 g pack only 1,000 spores. A 100 g floor makes sense for a concentrated product, such as spores produced in root-organ culture, where one gram can carry far more than the minimum.

But the notification does not define "spore-based", and the Order has one standard for all mycorrhizal biofertilisers. As written, almost any VAM product can be called spore-based and sold in 100 g packs at the same minimum count. The exception rewards a word, not a concentration. The fix is simple: link the 100 g floor to a higher spore count, tested like every other parameter. Until then, producers who use the 100 g pack should keep batch-wise spore counts and infectivity results that justify it. I have explained in an earlier note why spore counts and infective propagules measure different things; both matter here.

Where the Notification Is Silent

• Capsules. Schedule III counts several biofertilisers "per gram of capsule content", and ICAR-IISR's microbial biocapsule (about 1 g per gelatin capsule, with a reported room-temperature shelf life of up to 18 to 20 months) is licensed to industry. A pack of capsules fits none of the three rows.
• Liquid mycorrhiza. The VAM row is by weight. A liquid mycorrhizal product has no size.
• Bio-enriched organic manure. Schedule IV allows bio-enriched organic manure with a total viable count of 5 × 10⁶ per gram, a tenth of a biofertiliser's 5 × 10⁷, and S.O. 1567(E) does not cover it. A soil-application product that no longer fits a 1 kg pack can be reformulated as bio-enriched organic manure and sold in 25 or 50 kg bags with a tenth of the microbes. That is legal if the product meets Schedule IV, and it is the opposite of what the notification intends.
• Seven days. Published on 25 March, in force on 1 April. The transition clause protects stock already packed, not laminates, bottles and cartons already printed in the old sizes.
• No stated purpose. Even a short statement (viability, dosing, enforcement) would have let the industry design for the intent and not only the letter.

How I Expect the Market to Move

• Fewer, standard pack sizes. Expect carrier products at 200 g, 500 g and 1 kg; liquids at 100, 250 and 500 mL and 1 litre; VAM at 500 g, 1, 2 and 5 kg, with 100 g spore-based packs as a new premium tier.
• A race to concentration. When the pack cannot grow, value moves to what is inside it: more live cells per gram, longer shelf life, better protectants and encapsulation. That helps farmers only if the counts are real on the day of use, which makes testing more important, not less.
• Liquids keep gaining, in more bottles. Their longer shelf life will keep pulling the market towards liquids, and the 1-litre ceiling will turn every bulk liquid order into cases of bottles.
• Reclassification. Watch for soil-application products moving to Schedule IV as bio-enriched organic manure to escape the 1 kg ceiling.
• Institutional buying will be re-tendered. State programmes, sugar mills and farmer producer organisations that bought in bulk now have to specify the allowed sizes.
• Two pack regimes on the shelf for a while. Old stock may be sold until its expiry. Carrier stock packed before 25 March 2026, with a shelf life of about six months, should now be largely gone; liquids whose declared expiry runs into 2027 may stay on shelves until then. Dealers and inspectors will need the packing date to tell a legal old pack from a non-compliant new one.

What Will Change in the Field

Less than the industry fears, and less than farmers hope. Pack size governs how much product a farmer buys at once and how often a pack is opened. It does not govern how many cells are alive when the product reaches the seed or the soil.

That second number is the real problem. An analysis of government laboratory data by the Centre for Science and Environment found that 44% of the biofertiliser samples tested in 2019–20 failed the quality standard, up from about 1% in 2013–14. Reviews of commercial inoculants worldwide describe many products of very poor quality. For mycorrhiza, researchers who tested 28 commercial products on three continents reported inconsistent efficacy, and in 54 maize fields the yield response to the same inoculation ranged from −12% to +40%, depending on the soil.

So the gain from S.O. 1567(E) will be real but narrow: fewer half-used bags stored in hot sheds, no packs too small to treat a meaningful area, and an end to bulk sacks of uncertain age. Field results will improve where products were good at the factory gate and were spoiled on the way to the field. Where a product fails at the factory gate, no pack size will rescue it.

What I Advise Manufacturers

• Map every pack size to the table now. Retire the sizes that do not fit, and keep batch records that prove the packing date of any old-size stock still in the trade.
• Design each pack around a field dose. A pack should treat a stated area or quantity of seed in one use: one pack, one application.
• Validate shelf life at Indian temperatures. Test counts at 30 to 35 °C, not only at 25 °C, and set the expiry date from that data.
• Treat the ceiling as a reason to concentrate. Better carriers, protectants, liquid and encapsulated formulations deliver more live cells per gram, and that is where the market will compete.
• For VAM, decide honestly whether your product is spore-based. If you use the 100 g floor, hold the spore counts that justify it.
• Do not escape the rule by reclassification unless the product genuinely meets the other schedule.
• Check every label before it is printed. NanoKheti's label maker now refuses biofertiliser pack sizes outside the notification, and the free label check flags them on an existing label.

For Dealers, Farmers, Buyers and Regulators

• Dealers: check the pack size and the packing date of every lot; keep biofertilisers in a cool, shaded place and sell the earliest expiry first.
• Farmers: buy the size you will use in one go, close to the day of use; check the expiry date; keep the pack out of the sun; use the whole pack.
• Institutional buyers: write tenders in the allowed sizes and ask for a test report for each batch.
• Regulators: define "spore-based" by a minimum spore count; say how capsules and liquid mycorrhiza are to be packed; watch the Schedule IV route; and invest in testing. CSE also found the seven regional laboratories it examined using only 28% of their testing capacity in 2019–20. That, more than pack size, is where field results will be won or lost.

Frequently Asked Questions

What pack sizes are allowed for biofertilisers in India?

Under S.O. 1567(E) of 25 March 2026, in force from 1 April 2026: VAM (mycorrhizal biofertilisers) 500 g to 5 kg, or from 100 g for spore-based mycorrhizal formulations; carrier-based biofertilisers 200 g to 1 kg; liquid biofertilisers 50 mL to 1 litre.

Can biofertiliser packed in the old sizes still be sold?

Yes, if it was packed before the notification was published on 25 March 2026: such stock may be sold until its expiry date. Anything packed after that must be in the allowed sizes.

Is a 100 g VAM pack legal?

Only for a spore-based mycorrhizal formulation. The notification does not define the term, so a manufacturer using the 100 g pack should hold spore counts that show the product is genuinely spore-based.

Can liquid biofertiliser be sold in a 5-litre can?

No, not if it was packed after the notification. Liquid biofertilisers may be packed only from 50 mL to 1 litre, so larger quantities go out as several 1-litre packs.

Does the rule apply to biostimulants or bio-enriched organic manure?

No. S.O. 1567(E) covers biofertilisers (Schedule III). Biostimulants (Schedule VI) and bio-enriched organic manure (Schedule IV) are outside it.

Regulatory disclaimer: this article is an expert opinion for industry information, not legal advice. The Gazette text is authoritative: check S.O. 1567(E) and the current Fertiliser Control Order before packing, labelling or selling a product.

Editor's note: prepared with NanoKheti's editorial team. Every figure was checked against the Gazette notification, NanoKheti's FCO data and the sources below; the "In brief" box and the questions above were added by the editor.