Srikanth,

To my knowledge such fungi and bacteria preparations are not used by professional growers. They would be far too expensive.

As far as do they "work"? I think certainly so, for tired over-worked soils, especially when used with the addition of organic matter as per the recommendations of your agencies.

Hi pnbrown,

Thanks for the response.

These products do not cost much. A combination of these wouldn't cost more than $25 per acre which is affordable even by Indian standards if they actually work and result in reduced usage of chemical fertilizers and also result in eventual improvement of soil over a period of time.

With regards to the fungi, I have a question. Wouldn't the beneficial fungi that I would add get destroyed by the native fungi in the soil in due course? If so, how long would the added fungi survive and benefit the plant? I am asking this question with reference to usage in vegetable cultivation on commercial scale.

Thanks,
Srikanth

The bacteria and fungus I am referring to are the following.

VAM - Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhiza
Trichoderma Viride
Pseudomonas Fluorescens
Azotobactor
Azospirillium
PSB - Phosphate Solubilising Bacteria
Rhizobium

Checking them out on Wikipedia ... looks like some of them could be useful for rescuing exhausted soil.

HOWEVER, the farmer also has to be improving the amount of organic material, minimizing soil disturbance, etc. This is not a magic potion to sprinkle on the fields, it's part of a multi-pronged approach.

PSB looks promising .... Simple inoculation of seeds with PSB gives crop yield responses equivalent to 30 kg P2O5 /ha or 50 percent of the need for phosphatic fertilizers. Provided the seeds are correctly inoculated.

============
This could be a good research project for some Indian ag students.

yep, they process organic matter, but without organic matter they can not do anything.

One does not need more than 10 grams per pound of seeds for inoculation. If the claims of 50% savings in P205 are real then why don't people use it on a commercial scale? After all, the inoculants are very inexpensive compared to the claimed savings in fertilizers.

Do any of you know if these products have been used in real world commercial applications in the developed nations or is it that the corporate chemical fertilizer propaganda machinery is too huge to counter?

Some of the claims made by these companies are such that the bacteria will travel miles to fetch the nutrients for the plants due to the symbiotic relationship between the plant roots and the bacteria. I just wonder even if this were true by the time the bacteria travel the miles and back my vegetable plants would have completed their life cycle.

I will be meeting one of the manufacturers of these products today. I will try to get some more information from them.

I am posting couple of links to the products. Please feel free to delete the links if they are in violation of the forum policies.

http://www.knbiosciences.in/Bio-Fertilizers.html
http://ajaybio.in/prodpro.htm

Thanks,
Srikanth

If there is adequate levels of organic matter in the soil all of those will be there in the soil contributing to the health of the plants growing in that soil. Adding any of those to a soil lacking adequate amounts of organic matter will not result in any improvement in soil health or plant health.

kimmsr,

In other words if I were to add say 10 tonnes of Farm Yard Manure per acre along with these fungi and bacteria it would work great rather than just adding the manure. Is this correct?

I gather that so far nobody has pooh poohed these claims. The consensus seems to be adding these products with sufficient amounts of organic matter will be benefecial.

Skoka,

My daughter works in an independant university lab in the US doing research on soil fungi.

She inquired about those products similar to the ones you mention, and that I fancy very much because of the nice marketing websites selling them.

After a good laugh, the experienced researchers said that considering the difficulties they have to get some working cultures of fungi in the best conditions of a wealthy lab, it would be very surprising if wild uncontrolled inoculation worked.

A lot of parameters have to be under control for fungi to develop. Just a little modification of one parameter and no symbiosis will be established (no germination of any fungi).

The problem is that symbioses are useful in poor soils. As plants have to abandon some C to get something from the fungi, if the plants find what they need in the soil then the fungi would become parasitic.

I read a lot on Google scholar last winter, it seemed to be so exciting, and a whole complex underworld to discover. I introduced those shrubs argousiers in my garden, went to gather some sediments from different lakes to bring them the azobacteria, and I guess it's intellectually and physically better than to watch TV. But other than that, I guess it's more or less useless to try and add those organisms.

In my opinion, but I might be wrong, there's a huge problem in India resulting in a lot of bankrupt growers and thousand suicides. Foreign companies have pushed them into borrowing money, buying sterile GMO seeds and the chemical programs attached, and then the yields failed. Now whole villages are starving because they don't even have money to reverse and buy the seeds to go back on what they used to grow with success.

So it's great if your government push for you guys to go organic. And I guess telling you about the magic and wonderful underworld of symbioses, fungi, and bacteria, is a means to counterbalance the sweet talks and false promises of foreign chemical companies. Somehow it's manipulative, but the purpose is a good one.

I'm sorry if this is confusing, I'm an autodidact and not that good at synthetizing information.

Good luck to you and your people, and please stop listening to these horrible chemical companies that don't give a rat's behind about anyone and only care about the quick buck, forgetting that they too live with us on a finite planet.

Skoka, you pose interesting questions. To date I have not seen literature in the US encouraging the practices you indicate are being promoted in India. Within the past few years a method "to bottle" the various types of fungi/bacteria naturally present in virgin undisturbed land, the result of 'cold composting' of plant detritus, has been discovered. These products have merit in certain situations and can be used with an understanding that not all plants utilize them. I have yet to see a list of those that do and don't. Much research still to be done on the subject. Although there seems to be confirmation that the brassica family is not benefited by the addition of these fungi.

You appear to be in the best position to experiment looking for answers. Personal, hands on observations in the plant business will always supercede those glossy brochures.

Three suggestions for experiments:

1. Treat seed using suggested method. Do not add any soil improvements on the rows planted with them.

2. Follow guidelines for suggested liquid mix, allowing the 4 or 5 day waiting period. Then divide this into two parts and....
a) ....spray one part of the two on soil as directed, tilling in after application.

b) ...spray the second part on the soil after it has been tilled and just before planting. This is suggested because these types of fungi are very fragile and should be handled gently.

Interesting subject. Hopefully you will keep us updated.

FrancoiseFromAix,

Thanks for the response. Today I have learned the meaning of autodidact :)

Please see the first two pages of the pdf in this link: http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/pdf/pf_technologies.pdf

That link is from a reputed agricultural university's farmer extension service. In another document they report thrice the yield by using the said Precision Farming techniques. As you can see in that link they have used some of the products I have referred to.

Apart from few such Indian agricultural universities and government organizations I am not able to find any references to these fungi and bacterial benefits in the real world on a commercial scale in the developed nations.

Hi Nandina,

I am dependent on illiterate farm labor to execute these experiments. I will see if I can implement your advice.

I am told that the shelf life of these products are no more than 3 months. I guess this could be one of the reasons why they aren't too popular commercially.

I will probably have to dedicate couple of acres of land for these experiments. If someone can tell me how long I have to wait before I can declare such an experiment success or failure, that would be great. Does it take 3 months to show the difference or does it take over a year?

The land where I will be doing these experiments has been abused with excessive chemical fertilizers such as DAP, SSP, Urea and MoP. There is hardly any organic matter in it. In some parts of the land I am experimenting with Potassium Humate and Fulvic Acid.

If I can successfully carry out these experiments I will come back and report the results (success or failure).

Skoka,

I guess you're past bed time to answer so fast !

Yes, autodidact, I could have said self taught, but then I'm french and we're pompous and we like to impress with big words ;-)

I read the link and honestly it makes me want to buy that !

Concerning the azobacteria, I focused last year on learning about those and found in independant academic research that they are brought to you for free by birds or that one can find them in sediments at the bottom of ponds, lakes, or streams. Which is why I went like a nut in the wet wilderness to gather sediments ;-)

To be fully honest, I managed to get a bag of 6 mixed dried glomus sporules (AM Fungi) with much difficulties because they're not used in my country (except for the intradice that is fancied by pot growers).

Hence I experimented in my garden on tomatoes with/without, trying to get other parameters as close as possible. Although it wouldn't by far be considered as a true scientific experiment. No difference in growth or production between the toms with 6 glomus and the toms with none. Some great, some lousy, in both groups.

I also wonder about the length of time bacteria can stay alive in a liquid. When they are sold dry, they are dormant. Even if I can't see them, I can imagine they're here, ready to spring into life. But in a liquid, they multiply, consume what is around, and then ? Can they go dormant in a liquid ? Or would the buyer get a bottle of useless corpses ?

I'm not educated enough to tell you what to do. I'll just tell you what I've been told by my kid who works in mycology and symbiosis research (note that it's myco and not bacterio) : you're allowed to please yourself and waste your money on what you want.

I don't want to sound rude, it's just that ungrateful kids show no respect for their mom nowadays ;-) So those were her exact words to me.

Anyway if you can give me an Email adress I'll tell her to get in touch.

I would feel sorry for you to waste money, time and energy on useless stuff, however satisfying and scientific they sound.

Concerning the truth carried by this sort of litterature, well, although I'm still pretty gullible, I tend to have some doubts. I've dealt with corrupted labs in Europe for business and be assured that the most famous and covered with accreditations round here can be bought. I think that one can be sure of results only if one knows personally some honest person Inside. Otherwise, one can never ever be sure. Sorry if it's disappointing, but unfortunately, money runs the world and not many people are unbuyable.

I don't know what else I can say and I don't want to sound like a depressive cynical old bag, especially to an enthusiastic young smart person like you. So perhaps it's great for you to go ahead and try. Anyway anything organic will be better than ruining your environment while greasing evil foreign companies.

Hi FrancoiseFromAix,

I think they are all sold in powder form except for the Panchagavya which is sold in liquid form. Panchagavya is from the ancient Indian literature though we are all strongly advised to make our own. (More details at: http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/org_farm/orgfarm_panchakavya.html)

The other organic wave that is sweeping India is called Zero Budget Natural Farming. The investment is in one native cow. This is supposedly giving great results. I have even met some of the farmers who vouch for this method. I could point you to some of the youtube videos but they are all in Indian languages (some of which even I do not fully understand). Instead I will point you to the website where you can find more about Jeevamritha (a modern variation of Panchagavya): http://palekarzerobudgetspiritualfarming.org/Jiwamrita.aspx. I suggest you read through the whole website if you have time. It will not take more than couple of hours.

I have grown veggies using Hydroponics at home. I do not think it is commercially viable to go the Hydroponics way. I do not have much preference towards Organic or otherwise. My current goal is to produce chemical pesticide free vegetables. To make a transition from Hydroponics which is purely chemical oriented to Organic will be a big leap in faith involving huge commercial risk. Hence, so many questions regarding these organic products.

Please pass on my email id to your daughter. It is skoka123 at gmail dot com.

Thanks & Regards,
Srikanth

skoka, if you add 10 tons of manure along with 3 parts vegetative waste per 1 part of that manure you will have, eventually, all of those bacteria and fungi without spending any money on those things. All of those you listed are beneficial in soil but they get there with adequate amounts of organic matter, there is no good reason to spend money on amendments that are supposed to put them in the soil.

Yes, but, in poor soils a well chosen micro-flora will help. In one instance I told my wife, who was planting strawberries, to use mycorrhizal spores in the hole. She forgot, I caught her in mid planting, and she started using the spores. all those planted before died, all those planted after survived. In another instance, I planted fruit trees one year, 5 out of 17 survived. I replanted while placing rotten wood in the hole, all survived. In both cases it was poor, sub-division type soil, recently amended with top dressing. So I am not going to pooh pooh anything, under the right circumstances it can help. After several years or amendment, it probably won't.

"here is hardly any organic matter in it. " Until you add organic material, spending money on these products is a waste of time.

I have a problem with web sites that claim, as the site for Panchagavya did, "When suitably mixed and used, these have miraculous effects. " ... if you don't get the results, all they have to do is claim you did it wrong.

It's using true statements applied to a context that makes them meaningless:

"Physico-chemical properties of Panchagavya revealed that they possess almost all the major nutrients, micro nutrients and growth harmones (IAA & GA) required for crop growth." Perhaps, but getting it from the vat of dung to the roots of the plants that need it is the problem. .... diluting it by a factor of hundreds would dilute these things to the point of non-existance.

They also say, " Lactobacillus produces various beneficial metabolites such as organic acids, hydrogen peroxide and antibiotics, which are effective against other pathogenic microorganisms besides its growth." ... yes, in human intestines. No one has shown it happening on plants.

Jiwamrita seems to be the same thing - diluted fermented local cow dung, with the addition of some dirt from the field and minus the jaggery and milk.

Neither of these would be as effective as improving the organic content of the soil

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If a large commercial farm could replace expensive purchased fertilizers and pesticides with a barrel of fermentig cow dung ... they would DO IT!

This looks like a way to placate farmers, make them thing they are doing something ... a large, useless energy-wasting pacifier. A placebo.

This question reminds me of the proposition, to which I subscribe, that the real gardeners are soil microbes - bacteria, fungi, and protists - which convert soil nutrients into plant-usable stuff and protect them from soil-borne ills. The key point is that there are 10,000 to 20,000 species in any garden soil; some are generalists and some are specialists that have co-evolved with a particular plant family. This takes us to the uncomfortable conclusion that a cocktail of a few species mightn't be very helpful. However, "feed them and they will come", which is to say that minute soil microbe populations can be expanded. Crop rotation is relevant here. Also, adding organic matter is basic; a refinement could be applications of aerated compost tea, with perhaps a shot of molasses (or a tin of cat food with fungi in mind). You will note that none of these has a brand name; I always distrust "products", which has served well. Regards, Peter.