Re: [compost_tea] Bacteria all single celled?

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 13:45:32 EDT

I believe there was a paper that suggested that actinobacteria can have
suppressive effects. Unfortunately, the work was done in petri plates, as I
recall, and thus likely has no valid transference to field conditions.

I can get lots of fun interactions going on a petri plate that I never see
happening in the soil. That's the problem with tings done on plates in a lab -
they are meaningless in the real world.

So, we have yet to validate that addition of actinobacteria, or actinomycetes
(they really are bacteria, not fungi), functions in a significant way in
field conditions to suppress nematodes. There is some correlative data to suggest
that when your soil foodweb is really poor, addition of actinobacteria can
suppress fungal disease.

But then you set the stage for suppression of mycorrhizal fungi. Some
correlative data showing that actinobacteria suppress VAM and ectomycorrhizal fungi.
 

So, if you are growing plants that do not require mycorhrizla fungi, and you
want to keep the soil from progressing into a different foodweb structure,
then use inocula containing actinobacteria. But if you want to grow something
else, you have to shift the community of bacteria toward the true bacteria, and
get beneficial fungi growing.

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com
SFI Oregon, USA
SFI Australia
SFI New York
SFI Europe
SFI New Zealand

"Hope is not a feeling. It is not the belief that things will turn out well,
but the conviction that what we are doing makes sense, no matter how things
turn out." -- Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic





Received on Sun Jul 06 2003 - 22:09:37 EDT

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