From: soilfoodweb@aol.com
Date: Mon Feb 03 2003 - 17:05:22 EST
Hi Eltjo -
You asked:
> To end up with a compost tea that has excellent disease surpressive
> qualities, is it more important to have a high active fungal biomass
> and a 2.5um hyphal diameter or lower numbers but a hyphal diameter of
> 3um?. The tea would be used for controlling mold and fungal diseases
> on potatoes.
>
It depends on the diseases you have. In tea for both potato and vines, it is
more important to have adequate biomass of fungi. The wider diameter hyphae
are "icing on the cake" if you have them.
Let's be careful on the "controlling" terminology here. The folks at the
ICTC have been poking about this, and they are correct. I can talk about
control, because I have data showing control. But you can't, unless you
collect the data. So, use terms like the "tea improved the health of the
plant so the disease could not establish". Or the protozoa and nematodes
consumed the disease, the way a cat consumes mice. we can use this approach,
to say there's a mechanical control, because this is not a pesticide
interaction.
There is little to show that compost tea really has a "killing" effect. We
occupy the leaf surface so the disease cannot establish on the leaf surface.
We consume all the food a pathogen might use, before the pathogen arrives, so
the disease cannot establish.
These are important to avoid the pesticide label on tea. OK?
> What is a realistic goal of Active Fungal Biomass with a diamter of
> 3um?
>
Minimum of 2 micrograms of active fungal biomass, better to have 10 ug, even
better to have 30 ug.
> According to the SFI reports soil drenches require teas with a total
> Fungal to Bacteria Biomass of 5 - 10. I have not seen too many
> reports with ratios >1. How beneficial is it to use such a tea (soil
> drench) prior to or during transplanting spruce and fur trees.
>
What you want to achieve is SOIL with this ratio. What does it take in tea
to inoculate enough fungi to grow back the desired soil range? We have seen
improvement of fungi in soil back to the desired SOIL range using teas with
the TEA level of desired activity.
Sort of two different things, and I may not have emphasized this before.
OK?
Elaine
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com
.
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