Re: Define disease suppressive

From: Elaine Ingham (Soilfoodweb@AOL.COM)
Date: Mon Jan 20 2003 - 09:25:52 EST


Hi Joel -

How was disease suppression measured in those studies? Does it have anything to do with whether those teas will suppress actual disease organisms in the real world?

When you do plate count methods, they have no bearing at all on what is going to happen in the real world.

What are plate count methods? Agar plate, in the lab. Place squares of agar with the pathogenic organism growing on it around the edge of the agar plate. Dig a well in the middle of plate, and put the tea in the well. Incubate at room temperature. Look for zones of inhibition between the tea well and the pathogen squares.

Will this inhibition happen in the soil? On leaf surfaces? There is no correlation between what you see on the plate, incubated at constant temperature, constant moisture and humidity, and what is going to happen on the plant leaf, or in the soil. It's a waste of time and effort to run those assays.

You have to check for disease suppression on leaves of plants in the field. In the soil. Agar plates incubated in a lab just aren't adequate subsitutes for the real world.

I can put any number of nasty compounds in that well in the middle of that plate and show disease suppression - on the plate.

Chemical inhibition is NOT the most important mechanism for how tea works in the real world. In fact, we can't demonstrate that it is even a part of the control of diseases in the real world.
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I remain unconvinced that anaerobic teas do the job in the real world. People played with anaerobic teas for centuries, and did not get the results we have seen in the last ten years with the 24 hour aerobic teas.

If anaerobic teas worked well all the time, why didn't they gain more acceptance?

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
Corvallis, OR
Port Jefferson, NY
Lismore, NSW, Australia
Hilversum, The Netherlands
www.soilfoodweb.com

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