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Overton Environmental Enterprises, Inc. is a Canadian company that develops innovative biotechnology solutions that reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Their EcoTea™ products and research are focused on helping farmers work with soil ecosystems instead of against them. In their years of research they have proven direct results from using broad spectrum biology but the impacts in the soil and changes in soil quality have been harder to showcase.

Three seasons ago they discovered the microBIOMETER® testing system. These tests have given them a way to benchmark pre application conditions, the post application changes and most importantly the improvements over time. This real-time way for farmers to see the unseeable has given them confidence in the value of biology for their soils and programs. They use microBIOMETER® to augment field data (i.e. help correlate scores with plant health data and yield). microBIOMETER® has allowed them to show how EcoTea™ can influence root bacterial to fungal ratios and determine (at least in part) the amount of resources the plant is allocating to the rhizosphere.

The microBIOMETER® has given us another way to showcase how re-introducing biology can help our soils and the hard-working communities that rely on them.”

EcoTea™ is a biological product with biodiversity like no other, built on the vision of soil biodiversity enhancing professional success. EcoTea™ combines a wide array of plant-supporting microorganisms fortified with added biostimulants to enhance soil quality and nutrient function. Diversity is the key, allowing our products to adapt and meet your individual site needs, based on plant response and requirements. Our proprietary process built with ecological engineering provides the functional microbial community associated with healthy crops and soil.

BioHub Solutions, an Australian company that provides biological solutions to the agricultural industry, has incorporated microBIOMETER® into their business. BioHub Solutions believes measurements should be simple whenever possible to ensure their implementation and repeatability. microBIOMETER® has become an integral part of the BioPlan processes. Growers also like it because it provides instant feedback and accountability for Biohub’s biological strategies.

“Our trees continue to do well against the control in areas such as average plant height growth, trunk to height ratio, and fungi to bacteria ratio utilizing microBIOMETER®. This is pleasing so far and we will continue measurements.”

Green bean study in North Queensland.

Green bean trial in North Queensland (above). Initial samples taken 2 weeks before harvest. So far overall bean numbers are 36% improved over control. More importantly, marketable sized numbers are improved by 52%. This is where the margin is for the grower. Microbial biomass is also 28% higher than control which is pleasing. Looking forward to the full harvest figures if they reflect the initial samples taken.

Olive rootstock (below). The data has indicated on average, a 17% increase in stem diameter over the control. Root weight improvements of 47%, biology biomass improvements of 46% and fungal to bacterial ratio improvements of 56% over control. This illustrated that the BioHub solution achieved results in the manner the team had predicted. Photo depicts an example of the treated plug on the left and control on the right.

Olive rootstock – treated

Olive rootstock – control

• • microBIOMETER® is the only non-laboratory test for F:B.
  • The methods of measuring F:B ratio give very different values ^1-11. The Gold Standard for estimating fungal biomass is microscopy, which calculates fungal biovolume.  Note that microBIOMETER® detects the same range as microscopy- not surprising as it was validated by correlation with microscopy.  For review of these measures see Appendix 1.  For measuring progress, stick with one method.
• Different methods measure different fungal and bacterial populations.  The chart below, adapted from Wang et al review of 192 different F:B ratios, illustrates how three different methods came up with three different F:B ratios for Forest, Farmland and Grassland.  Note that microBIOMETER® correlates well with the gold standard, microscopy. By plate culture, forest F:B is about 1/3 that of farmland, whereas PLFA forest F:B is slightly higher, and microscopy and microBIOMETER® forest F:B are 10 times higher than farmland.
• In addition, F:B ratios are strongly affected by the following variables:
  • Crop type – forest is typically higher than agricultural,
  • AMF – soil of crops that are colonized by AMF have higher F:B
  • pH – fungi tend to increase at lower pH
  • Sampling site – the rhizosphere of AMF colonized plants has higher F:B
  • fertilizer and litter composition – high nitrogen lowers F:B, organic fertilizer regimens increase F:B as well as MBC.
• microBIOMETER® cloud data demonstrates an F:B range of 0-13.5. Note that as the literature predicts, generally the F:B correlates well with MBC.  The cloud data portrayed is not identified by user and so we do not have information on the type of soil or crop.  From conversations with users, we believe that about 2000 ug MBC/gm soil is the highest seen in agricultural soil, while engineered soils can read higher.
  

  References

   

  1. Anderson, J.P. and Domsch, K.H., 1978. A physiological method for the quantitative measurement of microbial biomass in soils. Soil biology and biochemistry, 10(3), pp.215-221.
  2. Bååth, E. and Anderson, T.H., 2003. Comparison of soil fungal/bacterial ratios in a pH gradient using physiological and PLFA-based techniques. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 35(7), pp.955-963.
  3. Bailey, V.L., Smith, J.L. and Bolton Jr, H., 2002. Fungal-to-bacterial ratios in soils investigated for enhanced C sequestration. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 34(7), pp.997-1007.
  4. Bardgett, R.D. and McAlister, E., 1999. The measurement of soil fungal: bacterial biomass ratios as an indicator of ecosystem self-regulation in temperate meadow grasslands. Biology and Fertility of Soils, 29(3), pp.282-290.
  5. De Vries, F.T., Hoffland, E., van Eekeren, N., Brussaard, L. and Bloem, J., 2006. Fungal/bacterial ratios in grasslands with contrasting nitrogen management. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 38(8), pp.2092-2103.
  6. Johnson, D.C., 2017. The influence of soil microbial community structure on carbon and nitrogen partitioning in plant/soil ecosystems(No. e2841v1). PeerJ Preprints.
  7. Khan, K.S., Mack, R., Castillo, X., Kaiser, M. and Joergensen, R.G., 2016. Microbial biomass, fungal and bacterial residues, and their relationships to the soil organic matter C/N/P/S ratios. Geoderma, 271, pp.115-123.
  8. Malik, A.A., Chowdhury, S., Schlager, V., Oliver, A., Puissant, J., Vazquez, P.G., Jehmlich, N., von Bergen, M., Griffiths, R.I. and Gleixner, G., 2016. Soil fungal: bacterial ratios are linked to altered carbon cycling. Frontiers in Microbiology, 7, p.1247
  9. Soares, M. and Rousk, J., 2019. Microbial growth and carbon use efficiency in soil: links to fungal-bacterial dominance, SOC-quality and stoichiometry. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 131, pp.195-205.
  10. Wallenstein, M.D., McNulty, S., Fernandez, I.J., Boggs, J. and Schlesinger, W.H., 2006. Nitrogen fertilization decreases forest soil fungal and bacterial biomass in three long-term experiments. Forest Ecology and Management, 222(1-3), pp.459-468.
  11. Wang, X., Zhang, W., Shao, Y., Zhao, J., Zhou, L., Zou, X. and Fu, S., 2019. Fungi to bacteria ratio: Historical misinterpretations and potential implications. Acta Oecologica, 95,

   

   

Soil microbes are tightly bound to and often covered in soil making them very hard to evaluate by microscopy. The special magic of microBIOMETER® is the extraction powder and whisking process that separates most of the microbes from the soil. And during the 20 minute settling time allows the soil particles to precipitate leaving the extraction fluid >95% microbial.

This allows microBIOMETER® to examine 100 – 1000 times more microbes than any other method. When you apply extraction fluid to the membrane in the test card the colored microbes are captured on the surface of the membrane. A cell phone picture of the card is analyzed by the app and the intensity of the color of the microbes indicates their quantity – this is the basis for all laboratory colorimetric tests. We discovered that the fungi in soils are a slightly different color than bacteria, and so the app is able to distinguish between bacteria and fungi.

Click here to see a full video tutorial of microBIOMETER® soil testing.

Source: Food Web and Soil Health

The graph pictured here from the USDA website depicts the ratio of fungi to bacteria as a characteristic of the type of system it is in. An excerpt from the article:

“Grasslands and agricultural soils usually have bacterial-dominated food webs – that is, most biomass is in the form of bacteria. Highly productive agricultural soils tend to have ratios of fungal to bacterial biomass near 1:1 or somewhat less. Forests tend to have fungal-dominated food webs. The ratio of fungal to bacterial biomass may be 5:1 to 10:1 in a deciduous forest and 100:1 to 1000:1 in a coniferous forest.”

If you are measuring soil attached to the roots colonized by mycorrhizal fungi, your ratios should be much higher than is shown for agricultural soil. Also the saprophytic fungi population increases when there is a lot of litter for digestion, so you would expect to see different ratios at different times of the year and under different conditions.

The graph pictured below based on USDA website information shows the expected fungal to bacterial ratio for various plants.

Please visit our Using the Fungal to Bacterial Ratio with microBIOMETER® on YouTube for more information on fungal to bacterial analysis.