Hi Laura,
I got a good chuckle out reading how far off base Tom J., was
in his opinion about AM fungi with grapes. I know Mike Amaranthas and he's
a personable guy, but his research has been mainly dealing with ectomycorrhizal
fungi which have little to do with benefiting grape plants. Mike does make
a rather strange endomycorrhizal fungi inoculum in tablet form. A local
mycologist at Eastern Washington University who's specialty is working with AM
fungi tested those tablets and found little to do with endomycorrhizal fungi and
a lot to do with fertilizer. Dr. Ted Saint John would have fun ranting and
raving about that one. :)
It looked like Tom J was trying to say there was a specific
species of mycorrhizal fungi that works with grape plants. To be blunt,
that's ridiculous. Any of the 56 odd glomus species of
endomycorrhizal fungi will colonize grape plants. When you get into
endomycorrhizal fungi and try to say that only a specific species will benefit
grape plants or another specific species will benefit a tomato plant, etc., that
claim is outside the realm of known research on the topic of endomycorrhizal
fungi. It's fairly safe to say that endomycorrhizal fungi species are not
plant species specific. In fact research states that under the right
biological conditions AM fungi will grow into the roots of all terrestrial
plants. To turn that around a bit, it is also safe to say that grape
plants are NOT benefited only by a single species of endomycorrhizal
fungi. That's a claim out of the past that simply doesn't stand up to
research findings or reality out in the soils.
Another misconception about AM fungi is how to evaluate
it with a given plant. I can put AM fungi spores, hyphae, and host plant
root fragments containing spores and hyphae on or near the roots of a
grape plant in clay soils and have the AM fungi colonize the roots of that
plant. The germination of AM fungi is triggered by a compound in the
root exudate. To look at the roots and see that mycorrhizal fungi is
present, is a very poor way to evaluate the effectiveness of AM fungi...
especially in clay soils. In clay soils, test vs controls do not show much
difference in plant performance. The reason centers around the
availability of nutrients to uptake by the hyphae of the AM fungi. Just
like putting compost tea onto soils where there isn't food for the bacteria and
fungi to process is a fairly certain path to failure, putting AM fungi on
grape plants in clay soils where food is not being made available is a fairly
certain path to not seeing much improvement in plant performance. That is
the case especially in clay soils rather than in loamy type soils. When
food is available, the higher the colonization levels of certain species
of AM fungi, the better the plant performance characteristics will be
exhibited, but higher levels of root colonization in clay soils does not equate
to better plant performance because of the low amount of food being made
available in typical clay soils.
There is a strong synergistic relationship between bacteria
and AM fungi in the soils which is tied to the amount of food being made
available by the bacteria to the AM fungi. We can put CT on clay
soils, but if there's no food for the aerobic bacteria or beneficial
faculative bacteria then there is less flow of nutrients through the AM fungi
into the plant and that means plant performance is not improved even when high
AMF colonization levels are present. Make trace minerals, organic
materials, and growth promoting substances available via CT organisms which
process those soil amendments, then the uptake of nutrients produced by
live members present in the CT will be made available to the AM
fungi. It is then that higher levels of AM fungi colonization play a
significant role in improving plant performance.
However, not all endomycorrhizal fungi are equal in how they
benefit the plants they colonize. There is a cost to the plant to feed the
mycorrhizal fungi vs the nutrient levels that are being brought into the plant
by the AM fungi. In general, when the flow of nutrients into a plant
exceeds the cost of feeding the AM fungi, there will be improvements in plant
performance. What manufactures of commercial AMF inoculum do, is
select species of AMF that can pass along more nutrients to a plant than
what it costs the plant to feed the fungi. The higher the difference
between the nutrients brought into the plant vs the nutrients taken from
the plant to feed the AM fungi, the better the over all plant performance will
be when more nutrients are brought in than are consumed by the AM fungi.
That's the goal of each of the manufacturers of AMF inoculum. Of the
56 odd species of AM fungi that have been identified, there is a
small number of fungi that will give that kind of nutrient input vs cost to
feed the fungi. It's also important to know that most of the AM fungi
species bring into the plant about what it takes to feed the fungi with not much
plant performance improvement being made.
There is a general rule to consider with AM fungi and
plants. The first fungi to colonize the roots of a plant in general is the
one that will dominate the plant. If that fungi is a low performer AM
fungi that is in the soil when an uncolonized plant is placed in the soil and
that fungi gets into the plant roots before the fungi supplied in a
commercial inoculum, then little benefit will come from the fungi in the
commercial inoculum. Clay soils do not have much to offer in terms of
natural AM fungi because it is so difficult for the hyphae to get into such
soils so the probability of a low performing AM fungi getting into the plant
roots is low. Even in loamy soils the probability of low performing AM
fungi getting into the plant roots is low if the commercial inoculum
containing higher performing species is applied directly to plant
roots.
Clay soils are a poor source of food for AMF uptake even when
higher levels of AMF are colonized in the plant roots. Low levels of
food mean low levels of plant performance attributed to the presence of the AM
fungi. The same thing is true for the critters in good CT which are
added to clay soils. If you add CT to unamended clay soils you will have a
lot less food for the critters in the tea. And that means a lot less food
for the AM fungi in the plant roots to take into the
plant.
The fastest way to get food into clay soils is to amend those
soils with an aggregate material and with composted organic material and then
spray the whole thing down with a good CT. That's a practical thing to do
when dealing with small plots of plants, but when one gets into acreage, there
is a point where the costs of amendments far exceed the benefits derived from
the plants in the value of the crop being grown. In those cases, mixing
cover crop seed with a good commercial inoculum such as BioVam will get the
sprouting seed established, and raise the survival rate of the germinating
seed. The high performing aerobic bacteria and the trichoderma fungi
in BioVam help insure the survival of the germinating seed. Those same
organisms in BioVam also set up an environment that supports higher
colonization levels by the species of endomycorrhizal fungi which are present in
the product. In clay soils, one still needs to add trace minerals and
organic material as food for the CT organisms that are added to
support the cover crop. It's cheaper to add those components via CT than
to put tons of material and minerals out on the soils. The purpose of the
cover crop is to grow into place the organic material that will eventually be
turned into the clay soils. With large acreage, tilling in a productive
cover crop is the most cost effective way to get all that organic material in
place. It's cheaper than buying that material and hauling it in and
spreading it out. Spraying that cover crop with CT that contains fish and
kelp is a great way to get the trace minerals into the cover crop. The AM
fungi working with the cover crop roots will generate a lot of glomalin to build
soil tilth. The bacteria and fungi in CT will also build soil tilth in
that cover crop. Once the cover crop is turned into the soils, grape
plants inoculated with BioVam are ready to be planted and the mycorrhizal fungi,
trichoderma fungi, and aerobic bacteria in BioVam will establish itself in and
around the roots of the grape plants and the decomposing nutrient rich cover
crop tilled into the soil will provide the food to feed all the critters as well
as the food that will be picked up by the high performing species of AM fungi in
BioVam.
Now that I've made the case bad mouthing clay soils, I'm going
to pull the rug out from under that case and say that not all clay soils are
infertile. More often than not, they are infertile, but the area I live in
has fairly fertile clay soils. Lots of minerals are available here
including phosphorous and AM fungi added to plants put into our soils gives good
initial performance to plants. That doesn't negate the need to get
composted organic materials worked into these clay soils so as to sustain the
flow of nutrients. I've discovered that a nutrient rich cover crop can be
grown elsewhere and then cut up and laid out around my raspberry and grape
plants and the earthworms will pull that organic material down into the clay
soils. In one season that can convert these clay soils into well draining
soils filled with nutrient rich organic material and lots of soil life and tilth
can be built to depths of five feet into such soils in a single season.
Add yucca extract into such soils and one can realize plant
improvements that are often attributed to AM fungi working out from plant
roots.
In a vineyard, one can plant fescue grasses in between
the vine rows. Apply AM fungi with the seed and the mycorrhizal fungi will
vector into grape plant roots below. Apply CT with fish and kelp to
the grass and the grapes and nice green leaves with no bug problems and no
disease problems can be achieved. Mulch mow the fescue grass and the
earthworms will pull the clippings down into the soil and build up the organic
material. The AM fungi will feed nutrients into the grapes and the
following performance benefits can be observed: Most of the leaves will be
of larger size and much darker green due to higher levels of chlorophyll; the
grape clusters will be about 1/3 larger than in the control plants; the
seed germination will be about 9% higher than in the control plants; the
berries with one seed will be about the same size as the berries with four
seeds; the epidermis in the berries of the treated plants will be 10-20
times thicker than the controls; the epidermis is thicker from the start
of development of the grapes; that equates to higher wine quality; the sugar
levels in the treated plants will rise faster and to higher levels than in
the control plants; the after harvest spoilage of fruit will be
significantly reduced because of higher nutrient content and better
cellular development in the fruit and all over the plant; there is a much higher
resistance to drought conditions and a much faster recovery from drought
conditions in the treated plants than the controls; that is due mainly
to thicker xylem tissues, an increase in larger sized xylem tubes, and
ultimately more internal water in an improved plumbing system;
the phloem sieve tubes are larger in the treated plants than the
controls; the outer cellular development all over the plant is more
robust in the treated plants than in the controls; the ability of the
plants to resist early and late frosts is greatly improved in the treated plants
such that new shoots are not lost and fruit is not lost; the root biomass
in the treated plants is greatly enhanced and we can bring BioVam treated grape
plants into production in the second year because the plants are physically
able to sustain a large crop; with rich CT applications along with fish
and kelp enriched tea we can overcrop the grapes because the plants are able to
sustain a higher fruit load; such over cropped plants are able to continue
root and main vine growth and development while the fruit is developing;
we have also found that because of the drought recovery mechanism improvement
due to a better xylem plumbing system that we can water treated grape plants
well past the cut off for untreated controls because the treated plants can go
dormant and quickly harden off in preparation for winter.
When I started working in this field with BioVam, almost
all of the researchers such as Mike Amaranthus, Ted Saint John, Joe Morton, and
others were insisting that mature plants could not be treated and benefited with
mycorrhizae applications. In fact, one of the key mycorrhizae researchers
who has done a lot more work that Dr Amaranthus... Dr Joe Morton maintains
that commercial inoculum should not be made and sold. A key researcher in
the UK was telling me that he was getting just as many failures in the green
house as he was getting successes. I told him to get out of his ivory
tower and get out in the dirt and he would find that he could operate in
the upper right hand quadrant of a graph where successes were
increasing. Some rare researchers like Dr. Richard Koskie of the
University of Rhode Island have been hired by people to do work out in the
field. The US Golfer Association hired Koskie to do a study
on AM fungi in turf grasses on golf courses in New England
states. He found that the addition of glomus intraradicies AMF (one
of the power hitters in BioVam) worked quite well to improve the performance of
mature stands of turf grasses. His findings matched my own work with AMF
on mature stands of turf grasses. Koskie admitted in his report
that kind of performance is not seen in the green house and that more work
needed to be done out in the field. :) One of the funniest
things I've heard yet is from Dr. Joe Morton who said he was appalled at what I
was saying about AMF performance out in the field with plants not being on the
menu for destructive insects and diseases because the plants were in such
good physical condition. Dr Morton lamented over AMF treated plants having
a lot of problems with insects in his ivory tower (green house labs).
He said that the reason the bugs were going after his plants were because they
tasted better to the bugs. He had no concept of healthy plants not
attracting destructive insects. Dr. Joe Morton has been a leading
scientist in the field of mycorrhizal fungi for many years and yet he
didn't understand a concept that many back yard gardeners have known for
years. Other organic researchers like Bargyla Rateaver have written
and illustrated the work of Arden Andersen and Philip Callahan who have shown
that healthy plants do not attract destructive insects. Acres USA sells
some books by Callahan that are good to read on this
topic.
It's interesting to note that the claim of most of the
researchers that AM fungi won't benefit mature plants has started to go away as
I was able to demonstrate to a lot of them that rule was bogus. That
researcher in the UK with his bell curve ended up telling me I was
causing him to rethink a lot of the limitations researchers had been placing on
AM fungi for years. The real world doesn't live in a green house (ivory
tower). That's what I like about Dr. Ingham. She gets out there in
the real world in the dirt and isn't constrained by a bunch of rules that many
of the mycorrhizal researchers have saddled themselves
with.
Mike Brock, the inventor of BioVam, found out years
ago about the synergistic relationship between AMF, trichoderma, aerobic
bacteria, beneficial nematodes and the like in the soils. Mike
was working with Dr Robert Linderman at the time. Linderman opposed the
idea of aerobic bacteria working synergistically with AM fungi back
then. Mike Brock went on to develop one of the best
mycorrhizal inoculums that exists today. The last few years, Dr.
Linderman has been singing a different tune with regards to aerobic bacteria
working synergistically with AM fungi. An article published in the
California Farmer back in 1997 brought together Elaine Ingham, Mike Brock,
Robert Linderman and BioVam http://www.tandjenterprises.com/biovam_cal_farmer.htm .
One of the mycologists trained by Dr Joe Morton who started working for Mike
Brock a few years ago showed me test results she had from all the companies who
made commercial mycorrhiza inoculum. BioVam beat them all and that's why
she was working for Mike's company. I've tried a few other companies
products and found there's stuff out there that simply doesn't do squat... made
by researchers supposedly. It's a buyer beware world. For example,
I've purchased product from Don Chapman of Bio0rganics twice and the
mycorrhiza was dead both times and the product net weigh was short 30 oz in
a case of quarts. I had a mycologist in France call me
once after he had tried Plant Healhcare's endomycorrhizal
product. He said his plants grew really well but he couldn't find any
mycorrhizal fungi in their roots. He mumbled something about an expensive
fertilizer. BioVam has earned a good and well deserved reputation
among grape growers all over the world. Sales this year to grape growers
have been better than the previous five years... the word gets out among the
growers about products that work well and they go after such
products.
My point in this is that AM fungi does not work alone in clay
soils. It's important to get food into those soils... direct amendment or
via cover crops tilled into the soil... with a cultural practice that
replenishes minerals, organic material and the soil life that CT is able to
furnish. They all work together and they can each play a role in changing
clay soils into very productive soils for all the life that lives out there in
the dirt.
--Thomas Giannou
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