Fig Tree Organic Farm produce at the farmer’s market
Adam Jone’s Fig Tree Organic Farm in Queensland, Australia has moved to organic farming. This farm is one of the key producers of foods for the Organic Weekend Sunshine Coast markets, a famous destination for food consumers and tourists. Adam had spent a lot of his time trying a variety of different solutions to grow his crops for market.
Then, Adam met Bronwyn Holm, founder of Earthfood. Arriving on Figtree Organic Farm, Bronwyn and Adam tested the soil with microBIOMETER®; a soil test Bronwyn has been using for some time. The results showed Adam that Australian soil is damaged. This damage is caused by years of hot bush fires, extended lack of rain, overuse of chemicals, topsoil drying out and blowing away, nutrients locked up making soil water-resistant and land surface flooding. This is Australia. It is an ancient land of beauty with extremely damaged farms.
The microBIOMETER® test results also determined the soil was very low on microbes and fungi, and other tests showed it high in acid forming chemicals, probably from the previous owner. Adam was working hard making composting baths and worm juices, yet there was no deep repair due to many years of damage. The microBIOMETER® soil test was evidence that things needed to be done differently.
Bronwyn then explained to Adam the benefits of using Earthfood products which are made by using live microbes, and how they could change his farm’s health, crop yields, and increase his farm’s income. The two filmed a documentary on the farm just after planting. The original crops in the film were up to their knees and the trees to their waist.
Then after using Earthfood for three months, another microBIOMETER® soil test was performed, and they began to see some improvement. The crops seemed settled, and the pumpkin vine which usually has one crop per season had several wheelbarrows of produce. Adam was pleased with the results so far.
Bronwyn and Adam soil testing
At month nine, they ran more soil tests and took another collection of images and were excited about the changes. The soil under the cover crops was cool, and consistently damp when outside the farm boundary the environment was hot and dry. The trees were now two meters above their heads and all bush crops were up to their waist full of produce. The same pumpkin vine produced three crops in the same season and 2.5 tons of produce. The nine-month-old banana trees that were to their waist previously and not doing well were already fruiting and grown way above their heads. It would normally take eighteen months for these trees to grow and fruit. This outcome proved to be very profitable for Adam and he was happy with the results.
Since then, Adam has dove further into the regenerative farming and microbial world. He holds talks and field days, educating the public on the importance of microbes and syntropic farming. He’s found the crowds are getting bigger and bigger each time, which he believes is a result of consumers becoming more aware of their food and the environment in which it is grown.
Earthfood is excited to share their next documentary with us as well which they are currently finishing up. This documentary is on a farm which grows Heritage tomatoes, beans, squash, kale, dragon fruit, papayas, citrus trees, avocados trees, bell peppers, Japanese greens, bananas, and herbs of all kinds.
“Unless you can measure your soil foundations and biology, it is a guessing game on what can be grown to its potential,” Bronwyn said.
ABOUT EARTHFOOD:
Earthfood is rainforest in a bottle powered by live microbes. Historically handed down in my family since the mid-1880s and used in the Internationally awarded Hermitage Estate Wineries (Dalwood Estate now as one of them) when Eggert Holm, my great-great-grandfather, was their master winemaker using live microbes. With a soil scientist the IP for suspending the microbes to sleep so that the microbial concentrated solution can now be sent globally, and the microbes survive and thrive whether used in a pot-plant or on acres of farming food.
Earthfood has been supplying their liquid microbial concentrate to farms for the past 25 years, in the U.S., Central America, and Australia as well as in trials of vineyard owners in Bordeaux, France, and sugarcane farmers in Fiji, to name a few.
You’ve probably read how important it is for your soil to have a large, diverse microbial population, but how do you know that all those microbes are good?
Well to start, a healthy and optimal microbial population in your soil will always have a mixture of good and bad microbes. Together, these microbes perform important tasks to keep the soil functioning and the plants flourishing. Despite the complex relationship between plant and soil microbes, research suggests that soil microbes play a significant role in nutrient cycling, structuring plant communities, influencing plant performance and growth, and in disease control, which is why it’s so important to have a dense and diverse microbial community.
Thankfully, these soil microbe-plant interactions are self-regulated. And to keep these microbes functioning and plants thriving as they should, there’s a system of checks and balances that occurs within soil. For example, in a healthy, diverse soil mixture, microbes help plants suppress pathogens by inducing natural plant defenses, producing antibiotics, fighting against pathogens, or through the hyperparasitism of the pathogen. However, when there is an influx of pathogens in a not-so-healthy and diverse soil, things will start to function differently.
Once there’s a large enough influx of pathogenic microbes that have colonized within the soil, these microbes will produce chemical signals called autoinducers, which regulate microbial gene expression in a process called quorum sensing. In this example, quorum sensing allows those microbes to communicate with each other and change their genes to become virulent. Soil can become more susceptible to virulent factors if there isn’t adequate microbial diversity, as a diverse microbial community is critical to maintain ecological processes. To mitigate the negative aspects of quorum sensing, it’s imperative to have a diverse vegetation aboveground and a diverse microbial community belowground.
However, despite the good microbes’ best effort, soil conditions change and sometimes pathogens can take control. Depending on the pathogen, different physical signs and symptoms will become evident on the plant. Common signs of pathogenic disease on a plant can include foliage wilting, stunting, browning, and yellowing. Fortunately, because these are all aboveground symptoms, diseases can be easier to identify and potentially treat. Though, there are common belowground pathogens that affect the root systems of plants. These are more difficult to diagnose as they don’t always produce physical signs on the plant. The only way to specifically identify the pathogenic microbial species within your soil is to send your soil’s DNA to a lab for further analysis.
The best method that researchers have found to combat these soil pathogens is by supporting the good microbes, as the best defense is a good offense. Because microbial diversity has an almost linear relationship to microbial biomass, increasing the soil’s microbial biomass will increase its microbial diversity, which is the key to having a functioning and thriving ecosystem.
This is an abridged version of Dr. Judith Fitzpatrick’s talk at last December’s Acres U.S.A. Eco-Ag conference. Article also featured in the April 2022 issue of Acres U.S.A. magazine.
When a grower first goes organic, they often have one field that’s organic and, right next to it, a field that they’ve been farming conventionally. They run out and test the soil for microbial biomass, and then they write to us and say, “I don’t have any more microbes in my organic field than had in my conventional field.” Why?
It’s because, as a farmer, you have a big, big job when you transition to organic. What you have to have is microbes working for you, and they take time to re-establish after years of conventional farming. We’re all familiar with the food web, but what the conventional pyramid doesn’t communicate is that the microbial base constitutes greater than 95 percent of the food web biomass because all the life above it depends on this food source.
You can view the plant-microbe relationship as a marriage. Each one has a role to play, and they support each other. The plant delivers 30 to 50 percent of the food that it makes to the microbes in the soil in an organic system, and the microbes synthesize and mine the nutrients in the soil and deliver them to the plant. This is a marketplace.
A key player in the marketplace are the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Arbuscular means “room” or “little house.” Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi actually live — part of them — inside the plant. Outside of the plant they’re picking up phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, sulfur, and other minerals. When these are transported to the plant, the fungi trade them for the carbon they need — 50 percent of the dried weight of microbes is carbon, as all organic molecules are carbon based.
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi hyphae also connect them to other plants. This is especially true in forests. Scientists have shown that arbuscular mycorrhizae will give more phosphorus and other minerals to the plant that gives it more carbon. And they are key players in disease prevention.
The plant-microbe symbiosis is a sophisticated system based on needing each other. In conventional agriculture, you feed the plants directly with chemicals; the plant does not need microbes, so it does not nurture them, and you have a microbe-deficient soil. Microbes do more than feed the plant the nutrients you used as fertilizer, or that they manufacture — they build soil structure, support plant immunity and mine micronutrients in the soil for your plant. When you don’t rely on chemicals, you’re going to be reliant on microbes to feed your plant, and the microbes will build soil structure, mine nutrients for the plant and protect them from pathogens.
We have recently discovered that rhizophagy is an important way that bacteria deliver nutrients to plants. The plant puts out exudates that bring in the microbes it wants to inhabit the rhizosphere. These microbes are often referred to as plant-growth-promoting bacteria because they stimulate plant growth. Bacteria in the rhizosphere enter the root. As they migrate up the root, about 40 percent of their nutrients are extracted by the plant. In return, the plant gives them carbon and forms root hairs through which the bacteria can reenter the soil. Dr. James White has shown that plants that do not have these plant-growth promoting bacteria do not form these important root hairs. He has also shown — and other studies have shown too — that a plant can get 40 percent of its nitrogen, as well as other nutrients, through rhizophagy.
Conventional farming replaces the need for microbes by giving plants NPK, etc. What happens to your plant when you do this? If you put down nitrogen, you do not get the same amount of root growth as when the plant and microbes have nurtured the root. If the plant doesn’t need nitrogen, it doesn’t feed the microbes as much. It’s devastating. When you consider putting on nitrate and ammonium, think about the effect on the root and all the important contributions roots make to soil — e.g., plant stability and fertilizer.
When you go organic, or when you’re maintaining it, your job is to continue to either improve this broken marriage or to maintain it. If the land has been farmed conventionally, you have four big problems: poor soil, a decimated microbial population, a poor crop-microbe fit, and depleted soil organic matter or carbon stores — 50 percent of the carbon that was stored in our soil has been lost.
We’re stuck growing our microbes in a poor soil environment in which they’ve lost their homes. Microbes live on sticky pieces of soil and within aggregates. They multiply inside the aggregates, and in there they are protected from grazers like amoeba. These aggregates are formed by tiny roots and by fungi, providing microbial homes. They are what makes a healthy soil structure, because they allow soil to hold air and water and to prevent erosion. They’re not steady; they can go away if microbes and plant are not continually rebuilding them. In soils that have been chemically treated for years, you do not have good soil structure — you have eroded, compacted soil.
BUILDING SOIL STRUCTURE
How do the microbes build soil structure? A microbe has to attach to the soil — otherwise it will wash away, the same way chemical nutrients do. So, it secretes sticky substances. The best sticky substance is made by fungi. It’s called glomalin. These sticky substances are nutrient rich, and they allow the microbe to stick to the soil. They are very long lasting — even after the microbe dies, these sticky substances stay around, and they cause the particles of soil to stick to one another. They’re what build your soil structure. By increasing your microbes, you’re increasing your soil structure.
Depleted carbon stores also reduce food security for microbes and, by extension, plants. Microbes make soil organic matter (SOM) from the plant material. Plant roots are a very rich source of SOM for soil. That’s why cover crops work so well — they not only nurture microbes and protect the soil surface from erosion, but they’re great for building SOM. The dead roots are an excellent food source for microbes, and the digested material becomes attached to mineral surfaces. When the microbes die, they also become humus.
It’s a relatively recent understanding that 60 percent or more of the SOM that we call humus is actually the bodies of dead microbes. The rest is material that’s been digested by microbes. So, it’s going to be impossible to increase your SOM without increasing your microbes. Increasing your SOM is important because the SOM is the best indicator of plant health.
You can put down a meal like sugar— a lot of the amendments you put down are basically just sugars — that will cause the microbial population to expand. But if there’s not backup food sources from the generations of microbes that came before, or a slowly digestible fertilizer source, the population quickly dies off. It’s like giving a kid candy — it’s not going to build muscle. The amount of microbial biomass correlates very closely with the SOM that’s available to the microbes in that soil, in both humus and recently supplied fertilizer foods.
The number of bacteria in the rhizosphere is going to be much higher than in the surrounding soil, but it’s the surrounding soil that you measure most of the time. I call that the suburbs. The suburbs reflect much of what’s going on in the rhizosphere, but with a lower population. In a bare field, the microbial population is way down. This is one of the reasons that your cover crop is so important. Cover crops help maintain the plant-microbe process, so the microbial population is maintained and SOM increases to provide the carbon and other nutrients that your plant’s microbes will need for the coming cash crop.
Bacteria have about one one-thousandth of the DNA that we have. So, for most of their functions, they’re depending on molecules produced by other microbes. Every cell in your body — every cell in the world — is a gated community. Air and water can go in and out, but absolutely everything else has a receptor. Your microbes are very picky eaters because they have few receptors and few enzymes for digestion. We can only grow about 1 percent of soil microbes in the lab because you have to find out exactly all the different things that you have to provide for that one particular bacteria to grow.
If I take soil and plate it in the lab, the next day I might see one or two colonies. But if I let it go a couple of months, many different colonies start popping up — one today, another tomorrow — all different colonies. One needs another. We don’t yet know the nutritional requirements of all these different bacteria. What we do know is the system is self-sustaining, as one microbe starts to flourish and creates the food another microbe needs; then that microbe starts flourishing, and the chain continues. That is why a soil amendment that feeds the microbes is so effective. They start the process and allow the natural system to start to rebalance itself. This is also why microbial diversity increases as microbial biomass increases, as evidenced by the fact that the fungal population tends to increase in step with the increase in microbial biomass.
Just because you put down a bacteria in the soil doesn’t mean that it has a community that can support it. It’s like taking anybody with one talent and putting them in a community. There may not be the need for their talent, and there may not be the resources that they need in order to function.
Another thing that we’re just beginning to learn is that many currently used cash crops have been bred to thrive under conventional farming practice and have lost the ability to effectively communicate with microbes. This further complicates the transition to regenerative farming and encourages farmer dependance on chemical fertilizers. Now scientists are crossbreeding with some of the older species and increasing the synergism between the microbe and the plant. They’ve been able to get nice increases in productivity when they do that, because regenerative growers are dependent on microbes to deliver the nutrients the plant needs.
When farming chemically, the lab provides an NPK formula. For implementing regenerative farming, you guys have been the pioneers and the researchers, because there is no formula for this — every healthy soil develops a population of microbes that is unique to your soil, climate and crops. Even down the road from one another, people have different soils. To a great extent, you farmers are the underrecognized regenerative researchers.
DIFFERENT MICROBES FOR DIFFERENT SOILS
It’s amazing what different cover crops do for different soils. A group in New York City planted different cover crops in 6-inch pots of soil from an abandoned lot, where the microbial biomass was very low. After three weeks they looked at the soil microbial biomass. There was a tremendous difference in the number of microbes that could be measured in just a few weeks. Clover gave almost a 600 percent increase. In this case, wheatgrass was much lower. We’ve done studies with the University of Tennessee; there, hairy vetch was the winner. They have different soil, and they were growing cotton.
The point is that your soil is going to react differently with every cover crop. I spoke one time at a potato conference, and I said, “We really should have a place where farmers could just send in a piece of their soil and say to the lab, ‘I want to grow this; what cultivar should I use, and what cover crop should I use, and what actually works with my soil?’” At the end of my talk, everyone said, “Where do I send my soil?” I said, “Unfortunately, there is no place you can send your soil to have that work done. But it would be nice.” Also, as farmers know, growing and experimenting inside is not the same as outside.
ESTABLISHING OPTIMAL MICROBIAL BIOMASS
A lot of people ask us, what affects the microbe level I am measuring? Number one is moisture. We only test soils that are fresh, field-moist samples. They will contain as much as four times as many microbes as dried soil. If we revive a dried soil in the laboratory, the population of microbes is different in composition, and often in biomass, than that same population in field-moist soil. We especially see a big difference in the fungal-to-bacterial ratio because fungi seem to be more susceptible to drying out. We developed our on-site test at the suggestion of James Sottilo, one of our founders, who said, “I can’t send my samples to a lab. It’s like sending a body to a lab and asking how it’s doing after it’s been three days in the U.S. Post Office. And I need an answer now —not in two weeks.”
Microbe levels are also dependent on adequate nutrient levels, favorable pH and low compaction. If you have compacted soil, there’s not enough oxygen in it, so your microbial biomass will be low. Any disruption, like tilling, can greatly affect your microbial biomass. Temperature, salt and other chemicals affect microbial diversity and your crop. Other experiments have shown that as temperature goes up, microbial biomass goes down — but respiration, which indicates activity, goes up.
Microbial biomass varies over the season. Different test systems give quite different results, so you should stick with one system for monitoring. Interestingly, in spring, when the plant first wakes up and puts out a big boost to stimulate the microbes, we see a doubling of the microbial biomass, which then drops down. That’s called the priming effect. A fertilizer can also have a priming effect.
It is very important that after a priming effect there is sufficient food for the microbes that have been stimulated. For most soils, this requires that the fertilizer have the correct C:N ratio for the soil and crop. A fertilizer with too high a C:N ratio will boost respiration, which means the carbon is being released as CO2, but it will not allow the microbes to store the C in the organic carbon compounds that the microbes need to nourish the plant and build soil structure.
Microbial respiration — the amount of carbon dioxide released by a given weight of soil — is a measure of microbial activity and is not necessarily correlated with microbial biomass. These two measurements tell you two different things. The most important information you can get from testing is what is called the metabolic quotient (q). The q number = respiration / microbial biomass. If respiration of a given microbial biomass is higher than it should be, your fertilizer is being released into the air and not helping your microbes and plants to grow. Luckily, the fungal-to bacterial ratio correlates almost perfectly with q and tells you that you’re building fertility, not releasing it into the air as CO2.
In an organic or sustainable system, you’re entirely or largely dependent on the microbial community for immunity to pathogens. I can’t emphasize enough that the immune system of the plant is microbial. If the plant gets an infection of its leaves, it sends a message to the
root to bring in the bacteria that makes the antibiotic that it needs to fight that infection. If you don’t have those microbes, you can’t do that. Plants, like people, need to be exposed to a whole variety of microbes — not just good microbes. A huge study in Europe showed that organic farms required 97 percent fewer pesticides of any sort. What a gain in cost savings and food health!
Plants need to be exposed to and learn the ways of bad microbes. Organically grown plants develop 2,000 antioxidant compounds that are not in plants that are grown non-organically with chemicals. Those antioxidants protect the plant and when ingested provide protection against inflammation, cancer, etc. In addition, it is these antioxidants that plants make to defend themselves against disease that give microbially nourished plants the flavors that make them so much more desirable.
Your plant is also dependent on microbes for its required minerals and nitrogen, for digesting litter to increase soil matter, for providing information about soil conditions that allow the plant to adapt and for creating soil structure that increases water holding capacity — when you have an adequate microbial population, you increase your water holding capacity by 50 percent. Microbes also increase soil structure — protecting soil from erosion while building soil organic matter. It is important to point out here that soil organic carbon is what is measured, but it is stored in SOM — molecules containing NPK and all the other nutrients plants need.
The key to transitioning, then, is to provide the environment that will allow your microbial community to rebuild itself. There’s no formula for it. The right formula will depend on your soil, your climate and your crops. We know that the microbial community can do this by itself, given the right foods and opportunity. And you can tell if you’re going in the right direction by measuring microbial biomass and fungal-to-bacterial ratio.
A teaspoon of healthy soil contains billions of microbes.
Microbes feed the plants, strengthen their roots, and increase their yields. A plant sends signals to attract the microbes it needs at any given moment. In chemical-free agriculture, there is a good marriage between plants and microbes. In a complex, self-regulating system, plants and microbes work harmoniously, nourishing each other.
The chemistry of a plant sends specific nutrients to attract microbes to strengthen its immunity. The plant is not only capable of diagnosing its needs, it also makes its own medicine. When chemicals interfere with self-regulation, the plants are weakened. What should you do to improve the health of your plants? Build your microbial biomass by building your soil. Soil structure is the microbial home. A couple ways to build your soil structure are composting and cover crops. The roots in the soil are home to microbes. In nature, soil is covered, not fallow. The global soil degradation and desertification affects us all.
The microbes found in soil are also found in our gut. The health of the soil impacts the nutritional value of our food and our health. The immunity of a plant impacts our own immunity. What we eat is essential to our own wellbeing. By taking care of the land and our agriculture, we are also taking care of ourselves. In this interview with Dr. Judy Fitzpatrick, microbiologist and diagnostic developer, we deepen into the importance of microbial biomass, the ratio of fungi to bacteria, plant – and human – immunity, and how to build soil
structure.
This article was featured in the April 2022 issue of Heart & Soil Magazine Rooted in Wisdom.
Click here to listen to the full interview on Heart & Soil TV.
An interview with the San Antonio Food Bank who is using microBIOMETER® in their Farm and Garden Program.
How are you using microBIOMETER®?
We are using microBIOMETER to track the soil health on our farms, gardens and compost. This test allows us to understand if we are providing an environment for our crops to thrive. Because we grow fruit trees, herbs and annual edible crops the fungal to bacterial ratio helps us identify the current soil health and help us understand what strategies we can look to implement to improve that environment over time.
How does microBIOMETER® help people understand the importance of soil biology as opposed to the historical focus on soil chemistry?
Traditional soil tests give you a window into what nutrients are or are not available within your soil. It can give you insight into how much organic matter might be present in your soil, but not how you might work to track progress on soil health, diversity or improving your soil food web on an affordable level. While knowing the nutrient breakdown is helpful information it does not help you understand if you are providing an ideal environment for those micro and macro organisms to thrive and ultimately aid your crops or plants in receiving those nutrients and so much more. The microBIOMETER® test kit has helped us better understand our complex food web and what strategies we can do to create a more balanced environment for our crops and our soil.
How did the microBIOMETER® information assist you with your project?
This test helps us to educate not only our staff on soil health strategies, but also our volunteers and anyone who attends are Teaching Garden classes. The data we collect helps us to showcase how the strategies we are employing to improve our soil health are making a difference from season to season as opposed to every two years from a traditional soil test. That enables us to make better recommendations to our community of growers about ways they can improve their soil, too.
About the San Antonio Food Bank
The San Antonio Food Bank takes pride in fighting hunger, feeding hope in our 29-county service area. We believe that no child should go to bed hungry, adults should not have to choose between a hot meal and utilities, nor a senior sacrifice medical care for the sake of a meal.
Founded in 1980, The San Antonio Food Bank has quickly grown to serve 90,000 individuals a week in one of the largest service areas in Texas. Our focus is for clients to have food for today but to also have the resources to be self-sufficient in the future.
Fighting hunger is our number one priority but we also serve to educate and provide assistance in many other ways. We achieve this through our variety of programs and resources available to families, individuals, seniors, children, and military members in need.
Our Farm and Garden Program consists of two locations and six growing spaces, including two farms and the garden at the New Braunfels Food Bank. Together these areas total more than 100 acres and provide 300,000 pounds of fresh local produce annually to our 29-county service area. We utilize 5,000 volunteers annually to assist with our operation and to provide local produce to the community.
Our Farm and Garden Program strives to provide quality, local produce to the community and to provide resources to teach those in our community how to grow food for today and in the future. In order to meet those goals, we start with our soil. By understanding our soil biology and health we get a window into what is happening at the root level and better understand the environment where our crops live and how to make improvements so we are growing healthy plants and nutritious crops. We believe everyone deserves access to nutritious fruits and vegetables.
Our Teaching Garden classes provide information about the importance of soil and composting as a foundation for building soil diversity and health. We utilize cover cropping on the farms and in our gardens to reduce erosion, build soil fertility, reduce weed pressure and increase organic matter. We create and utilize composting to increase the diversity of our soil, divert valuable resources from the landfill and introduce the community to the benefits of composting at home or in the community.
Janet Atandi, a nematology PhD student in Kenya, is currently working on an assessment of banana fiber paper on soil health as part of a Wrap and Plant technology study. In brief, she is testing the long-term effect of using modified banana fiber paper to manage plant-parasitic nematodes and its impact on the beneficial soil microbial communities.
The banana fiber paper is used as an organic carrier for either ultra-low dosages of nematicides (abamectin and fluopyram) or microbial antagonists (Trichoderma spp.) and is to be compared to unmodified paper.
This study is being conducted using potatoes and green peas as the test crops over five consecutive seasons. With the aid of a microBIOMETER® test kit, Janet will be able to assess the impact of the paper on the soil microbial biomass and thus will be able to determine whether the banana paper is effective or detrimental to soil health.
Wrap and Plant technology sources:
NC State explores promising pest-control strategy with high-impact potential for sub-Saharan Africa
Banana’s Waste, potatoes gain
Potato farmers conquer a devastating worm—with paper made from bananas]
microBIOMETER® can tell you if you are increasing the nutrient value and disease resistance of your crop.
A Rodale study showed greatly increased levels of the vitamins and minerals in sustainably farmed soils as opposed to mineral fertilized crops. And at Rodale, the sustainable practice yields are the same as the paired fields farmed with mineral fertilizers – and in bad weather, and disease years significantly better. Rodale is only one of many studies showing the increased nutrient value of organically and sustainably grown food.
Now Dr. Montgomery of the University of Washington’s team in a similar study has shown that if you are increasing your microbial biomass you are increasing the nutrient level of your crop: “soil health is a more pertinent metric for assessing the impact of farming practices on the nutrient composition of crops”.
Biklé, A. and Montgomery, D.R., 2021. Soil health and nutrient density: beyond organic vs. conventional farming. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.
Hepperly, P.R., Omondi, E. and Seidel, R., 2018. Soil regeneration increases crop nutrients, antioxidants and adaptive responses. MOJ Food Process Technol, 6(2), pp.196-203.
University study demonstrates legumes are more efficient at improving soil MBC than grasses
Under the direction of Assistant Professor Denise Finney, Kylie Cherneskie, biology student at Ursinus College, conducted an experiment on the impacts of nitrogen fertilizer addition on soil microbial communities. Kylie measured microbial responses using microBIOMETER®.
Click here to view the finished poster presentation. If you would like to incorporate microBIOMETER® into your classroom studies/academic research, we offer a selection of Academia Classroom Kits.
Nature article reports that microbial biomass estimates by microBIOMETER® correlates with soil health and yield stability.
The microBIOMETER® soil test was used to report microbial biomass in a recent Nature publication*. Scientists Dr. Judith Fitzpatrick and Dr. Brady Trexler of microBIOMETER® collaborated with a University of Tennessee team headed by Dr. Amin Nouri. The team evaluated the effects on soil health and yield stability of 39 different methods of raising cotton over 29 years. The conditions tested included till, no-till, various cover crops and different levels of nitrogen fertilization.
The study found that the major impacts on yield were very dry or wet conditions, and low or high temperatures. The deleterious effects of these weather extremes on yield were mitigated by regenerative agricultural practices which resulted in adequate soil, C, N, soil structure and microbial biomass.
*Nouri, A., Yoder, D.C., Raji, M., Ceylan, S., Jagadamma, S., Lee, J., Walker, F.R., Yin, X., Fitzpatrick, J., Trexler, B. and Arelli, P., 2021. Conservation agriculture increases the soil resilience and cotton yield stability in climate extremes of the southeast US. Communications Earth & Environment, 2(1), pp.1-12.
The Biospheres, working through the CDA*, accompanies and trains farmers/agricultural companies in the agroecological transition based on a soil conservation approach. The group is also working on applied research projects and therefore on trials under real farming conditions in which they evaluate the impact of certain changes in practices on different indicators (biological, chemical, physical, economic).
“One of our primary objectives is that farmers succeed in putting biology back into their soils to ensure their natural fertility. We are therefore very interested in everything that lives in the soil, from earthworms and microarthropods to microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, nematodes). For us, microbial biomass is one of the most important indicators that help us understand soil biology. Fungal to bacterial ratio, which is a less documented indicator for the moment, remains interesting to observe in certain situations and is the object of real research by our R&D team to understand how best to interpret it.
We have been using microBIOMETER® for 8 months now to test the soil in different projects in our panel of biological indicators. microBIOMETER® provides us with quick and easy results on microbial biomass and F:B ratio which is a real plus for us. We can perform tests directly in the field and present the results to the farmers. Moreover, the affordable price of the analysis allows us to perform soil biology tests in projects where we had no affordable way to do so before.”
*CDA, Centre de Développement de l’Agroécologie, are affiliates dedicated to R&D and advisory.
Copyright © 2025 Prolific Earth Sciences- All Rights Reserved.