What tests to order

Beneficial Organism Package

Are the desirable beneficial organisms in your soil, compost or compost tea? Find Out! Build Soil Health!

One aspect of the soil food web that has not been adequately addressed up to this time is whether you have the most beneficial species of bacteria or fungi in your material.

Up to this time, SFI testing has been able to tell you whether you have the desired active bacteria and/or fungi (are the bacteria and/or fungi performing their functions at an adequate level?), total bacteria and/or fungi (are enough of bacteria and/or fungi present, at adequate diversity), do you have enough protozoa, or nematodes? Does the soil have enough individuals of enough species of beneficial nematodes?

But now, with the addition of these new assays, we can tell you if the desired SPECIES of bacteria are missing.

Are you lacking the bacterial species needed to prevent a spectrum of disease-causing organisms from taking over?

With this new set of assays, we can tell you about the diversity of beneficial bacteria in your sample. The specific bacterial species we can tell you about are listed on the next page.

In the near future, we hope to be able to offer a similar set of assessments for beneficial fungi.

The methods being used to identify presence, and the number of individuals present of each beneficial species, are a combination of enzyme and molecular approaches for assessing the presence of specific beneficial bacterial species.

This assay requires the same sampling procedure as other Soil Foodweb samples. See the "How to Sample" section of the website. Running replicate samples improve your understanding of variability in the samples. You could also run a sample now, repeat a second time and a third to see how much variability there is from sample to sample.

Do you have the critters in your soil, compost, or compost tea that match the needs of the particular plant you want to grow? Will the organisms in the soil help or hinder weeds competing with your desired plant? Do you have the adequate bacteria to help protect plant roots from disease?

These are the assays offered in this package:

1. Beneficial Pseudomonads
1. a. Specific species of beneficial pseudomonads that should be present in any soil, compost or compost tea will be identified and enumerated.
2. b. If the beneficial species are lacking, we can tell you which inoculum to go buy.
3. c. Most plate count labs do not differentiate disease-causing pseudomonads from true beneficials. If you have high numbers of pseudomonads, other services can’t tell if they are beneficial species or disease species. Now you have a way to tell.
2. Beneficial Bacillus species
1. a. Specific species of beneficial spore-forming bacteria, typically Bacillus species, that should be present in disease-suppressive conditions, specific insect-pest bio-control species will be identified and enumerated.
2. b. Most plate count labs do not differentiate the beneficials from the neutral spore-forming bacteria, and thus you don’t know if a high number of spore formers is a good thing or not. Now you have a better source of specific information.
3. Nitrogen Fixers
1. a. Specific species of true nitrogen fixing bacterial species will be identified and enumerated.
2. b. Plate count labs cannot differentiate nitrogen-scavengers from true nitrogen fixers. People have been mis-lead about the presence of the right N-fixing bacteria being present in their soils, compost and compost teas. Get the real and accurate information! Do you need to inoculate your clover with Rhizobium? Or do you have plenty of free-living N-fixers that improve most crop yields 5-30%?
4. Actinomycetes or Actinobacteria
1. a. These bacteria are quite beneficial for plant species that require strongly bacterial-dominated soils, such as brassica, kale and cole crops.
2. b. Actinobacteria are NOT desirable around conifer roots, nor highly beneficial for most VAM plant species, since they often inhibit ectomycorrhizal and VAM species

If you lack a specific set of beneficial organisms, we can direct you to the producers of these bacterial, fungal, protozoan or nematode species.

Find out which species of beneficial organisms your soil lacks. Replace them in your soil. Learn what it takes to grow them. And then stand back and watch your plant’s health and yield improve.

Biofertility factsheet to Beneficial Organism Analysis >

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