Biosea
Biological Solutions
The Soil Biology
Its role in sustainable agriculture
- Soil health sustainability and good pasture production need more than just NPK. Plants thrive or suffer depending on the organisms around their roots.
- Beneficial soil organisms make nutrients available to plants, reduce nutrient losses by storing them, increase water-holding capacity and assist in suppressing disease.
- Plants depend on beneficial soil organisms to help them obtain nutrients from the soil through symbiotic relations. Nutrient cycling, the means by which nutrients are recycled in biological systems, involve the activities of micro organisms in healthy soil systems.
- The decomposition of organic matter is the first step in the nutrient cycle, the microbial concentrations and diversity of species will impact on the extent and the speed of nutrient cycling.
- Other micro organisms are responsible for making minerals such as phosphorus available to plants by solubilising the inorganic forms or by mineralising organic forms.
- The availability of other minerals isalso facilitated by a group of soil micro organisms known as mycorrhizal fungi. These act as an extension of the plant root system, dissolving mineral phosphate and providing phosphorus from the soil, which otherwise would have been unavailable.
- Soil micro organisms also protect against plant pathogens by colonising root systems. They also produce enzymes and antibiotics that form part of the plant/root defence system.
- A spoonful of healthy soil contains millions of micro organisms. Without these bacteria and fungi pasture plants can not reach their full potential.