The increasing global consumption of fertilizers and the consequent environmental concerns stimulate the development of technologies that simultaneously promote increased agricultural productivity and minimize environmental damage. An alternative that meets these requirements would be the combined use of naturally occurring plant stimulants with the commonly used fertilizers. In this context, oligosaccharides appear as potential plant biostimulants. With this work, the objective was to carry out a technological forecasting through the search for patents related to agricultural preparations containing oligosaccharides in their composition. The research was done in the European Patent Office (EPO), in the patent search platform of Latin America and Spain (Latipat) and in the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) databases. The results showed that there was a large increase in the number of patent deposits related to oligosaccharides in agriculture in the last five years, as well as a strong trend in the use of chitosan oligosaccharides. China is the main patent holder of the area and Brazil, despite not be a generator of this technology, is in a favorable position to invest in this field.
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