Soil Testing and Soil Health
In recent years, the agricultural establishment has been referring to the term "soil health" when discussing the various environmental issues that are related to fertilization in the agricultural industry. Now as fertilizer prices have increased dramatically, the biostimulant (soil microbiology) industry has received interest from many different areas of the agricultural fertilizer industry. Understanding the microbes in your soil is now considered a step toward understanding how to achieve soil fertility. Growers Mineral, Corp. has discussed the importance of soil microbes since 1955, and believed that the conventional soil test was not the best method of assessing a soil's suitability for economic crop production. In the past, the company would use conventional soil tests to appraise a soil's health; however, that discussion always included the advice of doing "strip tests" to evaluate various implemented approaches. However, now enters the microBIOMETER.
The inception of the microBIOMETER occurred when Dr. Judith Fitzpatrick saw a gap in traditional soil quality testing, which typically analyzes soil content and chemical volumes without giving special attention to microbes and their impact. Dr. Fitzpatrick, in her early career as a microbiologist and medical test developer, was running the company Serex where she created over 15 medical diagnostic tests and helped produce 3 million FDA approved tests a year. According to Laura Decker, president of Prolific Earth Science which manufactures the microBIOMETER, the microBIOMETER is changing the world of soil testing, making healthy soil a goal that a farmer can accurately measure. The producer can evaluate which methods are more effective and prove the efficiency of implemented biologic procedures.
In the past, testing soils for microbial contents has been too expensive and time consuming for many farmers. Plus, many microbes do not survive the trip to a lab, which leads to inaccurate test results. The microBIOMETER test is low cost at about $13.50 per test, and it is done in real time, approximately 20 minutes.
The microBIOMETER has been used in various scientific studies, but Decker explains that results delivered by the test are data only. The results of the microBIOMETER is useful to users who want information rather than prescriptions. Her thought is that this is why researchers and independent farmers tend to be more interested in the test than most agribusinesses.
At Growers Mineral, Corp., we don't know if the microBIOMETER is a good replacement for the conventional soil test or if it can help improve the interpretation of a conventional soil.
This is an excerpt from the Summer Growers Solution (2022) written by Jim Halbeisen, Director of Research.
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