Sometimes the wisdom we need to build a great future is buried in the past. Regenerative agriculture isn’t an entirely new concept, it’s actually more of a return to the wisdom of farmers from days gone by. What’s old is new again and its popularity is spreading around the globe like a prairie fire.

While regenerative agriculture gives a well-earned nod to the past, its relationship with science and technology allows it to effectively transform the way we currently grow food. microBIOMETER®, with their customers all around the world, are leading the way with technology that shows farmers when their soil health practices are working and when they are not.

“I believe biological agriculture is the way to regenerate and create more resilient soil that will supply nutrients and higher immunity to the plants. This is why microBIOMETER® has become an invaluable asset to my soil management efforts.” ~ Marcelo Chiappetta of Chiapeta Empresa Agricola in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Creating healthy soil may take the wisdom of generations of farmers, but microBIOMETER® supplies the knowledge farmers need to best manage potential outcomes.

Often, we are asked about variance – different results when you test the same sample. Our answer is that nature produces most of this variance. To explain, when you measure out 0.5 cc of soil, you have on average about 0.6 grams of soil. If your microBIOMETER® results read 300ugMBC/gram of soil, that means you have 600ug of microbial biomass – we divide the number we get by ½ because the literature tells us that 50% of the dried MB is carbon. As dried bacteria is estimated to weigh 1pg, if this were all bacteria, it constitutes 600,000,000pg or 600 million bacteria.

Now imagine that I have 600 apartment buildings in NYC that each contain 1 million people, and I decide to check 10 apartments in 10 buildings at 4 p.m. to estimate the number of people actually in the building. Obviously, it would vary because people are not always in their apartment and different apartments have different numbers of inhabitants – the same is true for soil.

Soil contains microscopic aggregates of different sizes and the number and type of inhabitants in each varies on the physical and chemical composition of the space as well as the nutrient, pH and hydration level. Each sample you take is like looking at a number of different apartments in a number of apartment buildings.

For this reason, when conducting research, soil and medical researchers run duplicates or triplicates. Because of cost, soil labs generally do not run duplicates and they see 10- 25% variation. We are recommending running duplicates when using microBIOMETER® unless you are doing academic research. Generally, we see <10% variation for a given sample, and for a field that looks homogeneous. Pastures can have much higher variation because the nutrients level across the area varies tremendously.

In learning how to develop healthy soil for healthy plants and people, Frans Plugge of New Zealand discovered the importance of increasing the fungi population in his garden and this led him to microBIOMETER®.

“The microBIOMETER® soil test makes measuring the fungi to bacteria ratio so easy,” Frans said. 

To promote the benefits of soil regeneration, Frans has started the community street garden using the principles of regenerative agriculture; minimizing artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.  Frans plans to take regular measurements of the fungi to bacteria ratio using microBIOMETER® to monitor his progress as well as create a great discussion point with members of the garden community, therefore, contributing to a healthy plant community.

Some of the microBIOMETER® results Frans shared with us for his home garden and compost:

• Our compost.  1102 ug C/g, F:B 1.7:1
• Veggie garden soil. 310 ug C/g  F:B 0.1:1
• Purchased compost soil mix. 1299 ug C/g F:B 2.4:1
• Soil from native bush. 469 ug C/g  F:B 0.8:1

The first photo pictured here is a bare clay strip that Frans forked loose but did not turn. He added a thin layer of garden compost along with a layer of soil sowing in ten different species of autumn crops; legumes, grasses, and cereals. Then he planted brassicas into the garden (second photo).

Over the years, Frans typically added compost and dug in green crop in the main vegetable garden, but had not had great success in yield. This autumn in the area the microBIOMETER® sample was taken from, he planted an autumn cover crop of 7-8 different species and a selection of brassicas amongst them. The idea is when the cover crop begins to go to seed, they cut at root level and drop as mulch (third photo).  Frans is hoping they can stop digging in an effort to build up healthy soil organisms.

Frans’ conclusions related to New Zealand’s potential to reduce its carbon footprint:

• If all New Zealand farmers lifted their soil organic matter (SOM) by .25% per annum, we could offset all New Zealand’s annual GHG emissions including methane.
• Globally, numerous farmers are lifting SOM by 0.5 – 1% per annum over many years.
• Add in parks, recreation spaces, berms, gardens and Crown Land.

About Frans:

• Completed his degree at Lincoln University in Valuation and Farm Management
• Founded ECOsystems in 1995 with the vision “Saving Energy and the Environment” and the mission “To reduce energy consumption in commercial buildings by 50%”
• Longstanding and current elected board member of the Carbon and Energy Professionals N.Z. (CEPNZ).
• In 2018, established the Kata School to promote practices of continuous improvement that Toyota has used for 70 years. He is the current chair.
• Attended and presented at Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership training in Brisbane and completedthe Kiss the Ground training on Regenerating Soils.
• Currently focused on using the behaviours of Toyota Kata scientific thinking and experimenting towards a vision to develop the culture required to achieve the challenge of carbon positive.

UPDATE: Dr. White sat down with Dr. Fitzpatrick and Jeff Lowenfels to discuss rhizophagy. Click here to view the webinar. (Jan. 15, 2021)

A summary of James F. White’s presentation at BioFarm, 2020 (Nov. 12, 2020). 

The rhizophagy cycle is an amazing process recently discovered by James White’s laboratory at the University of New Jersey, by which root tips “ingest” bacteria and absorb nitrogen and phosphorus and other nutrients from them.

The microbes pictured here in roots are called endophytes because they can live inside plants. The bacteria are attracted to the root tip by root exudates. They then enter the root where the cell walls are dissolved using superoxide, allowing nutrients to leak out to the plant. But the plant does not kill the microbes instead the microbes stimulate the formation of root hairs, which are escape routes for the microbes.

After ejection from root hair tips, bacterial cell walls re-form. The bacteria fatten up and are soon ready to acquire soil nutrients and become another meal for the plant.

Source: How Plants ‘Farm’ Soil Microbes and Endophytes in Roots

Not only does rhizophagy provide mineral nutrients, it is also the stimulus for formation of root hairs, which are critical to the establishment of a healthy root as can be seen in this photo of a plant root with and without endophytes.

 

 

 

microBIOMETER® reports the microbial biomass as ug of microbial carbon/gram of soil. The chart pictured here shows how much carbon can be stored in an acre just by increasing microbial biomass alone. (Chemically fertilized farmland averages about 100 ug/microbial C/g of soil.)

Microbial biomass is the best single estimate of soil quality. It is the bodies of dead microbes that build humus/soil organic carbon, returning carbon to the soil and building soil structure which prevents erosion and pollutant run off. (Chemical nitrogen fertilizers have been shown to inhibit microbial biomass.)

The literature reports that lab measurements of soil organic carbon are not sufficiently accurate in monitoring an increase in carbon sequestration in less than 3 years but that a yearly increase in microbial biomass can indicate that the process of carbon accumulation is occurring.

microBIOMETER® has been used to demonstrate increases in soil carbon due to increases in microbial biomass on the Apple campus in Texas and for 3 years by the NYC Arts and Science Carbon Sponge Project.

Source: Direct evidence for microbial-derived soil organic matter formation and its ecophysiological controls.

Katharhy G. is an agroecosystem and ethnoscience researcher who traveled to Ecuador to investigate the relationship between microbial biomass and crop health, as well as to study the local indigenous agriculture practices.

He visited 28 different farms growing 15 different crops. 14 of these farms are practicing conventional farming, while the other 14 farms are practicing indigenous regenerative farming. Most sites are not receiving irrigation. He tested the soil with microBIOMETER® and ranked the crop health as poor (1), average (2), good (3), excellent (4).

As the graph shows, microbial biomass correlated with crop health under all these different conditions. Samples with microbial biomass lower than 225 were all poor (1) and samples above 400 were all excellent.

The take home lesson is that to improve your plant health and yield, increase your microbial biomass by feeding your microbes with organic amendments.

If you have microBIOMETER® research data you’d like to share with us, please contact us. We would love to share it with our readers!

Contact:. katharhyg@gmail.com

The effect of various Roundup formulations and microplastics on soil.

Dr. Sharon Pochron and her students at Stonybrook University in New York have been using microBIOMETER® for two years. Dr. Pochron studies the effect of various Roundup formulations and microplastics on soil microbes and soil invertebrates.

Her most recent publication (See Figure 2) shows microbial biomass increasing on day 7 in both the Roundup treated and untreated soils – the 0 line depicts the microbial biomass on day 0. This increase is probably due to the soil microbes responding to rewetting. By day 14 the microbial biomass in the uncontaminated soil is back to baseline, but the Roundup treated soil has dropped well below baseline. By day 21 both soils have returned to baseline. This study shows only total microbial biomass recovery, but there is evidence that Roundup can affect microbial composition.

Source: Earthworms (Eisenia fetida) recover from Roundup® exposure. Pochron et al., 2021 Applied Soil Ecology. 158: 103793.

Prolific Earth Sciences is supporting research at various universities. Feel free to contact us to discuss your project and how we can assist.

Carbon Sponge is an interdisciplinary collaboration exploring the potential for urban soils to sequester carbon as a means to mitigate anthropogenic greenhouse gases and build healthy soil.

At microBIOMETER® we were very excited to work with Brooke Singer and play a role in this important project. Brooke initiated Carbon Sponge during her residency at the New York Hall of Science in 2018. Being introduced to the early version of microBIOMETER® (pictured here) was one of the factors that paved the way for Carbon Sponge. An excerpt from the guide, “Getting access to a tool that quickly, easily and cheaply measures microbial biomass in a soil sample, without needing a lab test, holds a lot of potential.”

Click here to order the Carbon Sponge Guide. All proceeds go to support the project.

Currently, Brooke along with her colleague Sara Perl Egendorf  are working with five New York City farms and gardens that are participating in Carbon Sponge’s pilot testing program using a collection of tools, including the microBIOMETER®, to track urban soil health over time and consider the readiness of the soil to sequester carbon. The affiliates (a few pictured below) are: Bronx River Foodway, GrowNYC Teaching Garden on Governor’s Island, Pioneer Works, Prospect Farm and Red Hook Farms.

Terroir /terˈwär/ began as the French word to describe the effect of a given agricultural environment on the characteristics of a wine. It is now recognized that terroir affects all foods and it is the effect on the plant of the soil, the climate and perhaps most importantly the microbes and other critters both helpful and antagonistic. Terroir explains why organic food is consistently rated more flavorful. These flavors come from two sources/families of immune induced products; the terpenes/terpenoids and flavonoids that plants make in response to stress and from the metabolites of microbes.

Organic food has more terpenoids and flavonoids because they are not exposed to pesticides, but rely on working with a healthy microbial community to stay healthy. We know that these terpene and flavonoid substances have huge nutritional value, even though they are not listed as nutrients by the U.S. government which claims that organic food has the same nutritional level as conventionally raised produce. These products have anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-cancer properties. Thus, food grown without pesticides not only saves you from the harmful effects of pesticides, but arms you with protection against cancer, pathogens and inflammatory disease.

Now let’s talk about the microbes. The only way to grow crops without harmful pesticides is to allow the plant to grow the microbial population that it needs. The plant grows this population by secreting nutritional substances that lure the microbes it wants to the root area. When attacked by a pathogen on leaves or root, the plant ups the production of terpenes and flavonoids and secretes specific substances that bring in microbes antagonistic to the pathogen (the soil is the origin of all our antibiotics). These microbes as well as the microbial metabolites can enter the plant and produce flavor, e.g. the major terroir effect on wines. This has been identified as a metabolite of a soil fungus that migrates up the phloem of the plant and is found in the grape. How is this terroir? The fungus or strain of fungus that exists in an area is dependent on the soil, the climate and the grape variety.

Source: What are Terpenoids and What Do They Do?