Complexity of Soil Microbiology: “Bug in the Jug”
As more research on the human biome is conducted for solving human disease with immunotherapy, more information about soil microbiology comes to light. As drug companies attempt to solve the mysteries of the human immune system so as to capitalize on that knowledge, so also chemical companies are suggesting they have solved the riddles of which populations of microbes are important in soil for symbiotic relationships with plants.
The "bug in the jug" concept which arrived on the agricultural scene in 1975 spans different approaches from dry or liquid seed treatments to dry or liquid soil application products. These products claim to have certain beneficial microbe populations formulated by the skill of human discovery. These various microbe populations are given credit for various benefits such as improved root growth or better element absorption by plants from the growing environment.
However, some researchers from the agricultural establishment who are agreeing with the need to understand the new frontier of soil microbiological life, claim the complexity of these microbe relationships needs to be understood more fully. In the research paper "Legumes versus rhizobia: a model for ongoing conflict in symbiosis" published in the New Phytologist in 2018 (volume 219, pages 1199-1206), the researchers suggest that the understanding of applying various microbe populations to soil is still an inexact science. "It is very difficult to predict which combinations of microbes will be successful under field conditions, since microbes that are beneficial to plants in the lab don't always compete successfully against microbes that already exist in the field," says Joel Sachs, a professor of evolutionary ecology at the University of California, Riverside.
Since 1955, Growers Chemical Corporation has understood this particular point. When Dr. Victor Tiedjens realized the significance of the soil's microbiological life, he felt rather than trying to predict the particular populations that created success in soil, Dr. Tiedjens focused on the soil environment that would allow the proper microbe populations to flourish in the soil. By oxidizing the soil with the clement calcium (Ca) and then feeding those populations a clean and balanced nutrition (GMS), Dr. Tiedjens believed the growing crop would receive the best benefits from the various populations of soil microbiology that evolved from a natural selection process. Growers Chemical Corporation's idea was to use the Ca and GMS addition to the soil environment to stimulate the correct soil microbes already present in a particular soil rather than try and isolate and add new artificial microbes which are selected by the profit-driven technology of humans. Dr. Tiedjens' idea was to work with Mother Nature rather than trying to improve on her.
This is an excerpt from the Spring Growers Solution (2020) written by Jim Halbeisen.
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