BIO-CARBON THE BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVATED CARBON .

1. BIO-CARBONTHE BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVATED CARBON.

2. BIO-CARBON What is it? Why was it formulated?

3. What is it? • High carbon content, high beneficial microbial content organic based soil restorer. • Therefore known as BIO-CARBON short for biologically activated carbon. • Key words; Carbon, Microbial activity, Biological, Organic, Soil restorer.

4. Why was it formulated? • To provide a unique blend of compensating organic based products in a single formulation to improve soil health. • What are these products? • Decomposed wood chips aged 12 to 16 years. • Vermi compost. • Biochar. • Mycorrhizae spores. • EM (Effective microbes)

5. What is the significance of the formulation as it relates to soil health? • What is soil health? • The best way to describe the “state of health” of a soil is by establishing the following:- • how far it has “deteriorated” from its virgin state due to intensive farming practices? • Where have interruptions in the soil food web occurred? • The above two questions are actually the same just asked with different terminology.

6. The soil in a virgin state. • ALL MICROBIOLIGAL PROCESSES ARE IN HARMONY KNOWN AS A BALANCED ECOSYSTEM. • THE SOIL FOOD WEB IS PROVIDING EVERYTHING THE PLANTS GROWING ON IT NEEDS.

7. The Soil Food Web:

8. Where do things go wrong in the soil food web? • Agricultural production is synonymous with mono culture cropping. • Plowing.( Soil structure destruction) • Fertilizing. (Over fertilizing to obtain crop yields.) • Irrigating. (Over irrigating, poor water quality) • Fungicide / Insecticides / Herbicide applications.

9. What is the result of these practices? • Depletion of oxygen. • Depletion of soil organic matter. • Destruction of soil structure. • Poor drainage. • Depletion of beneficial microbial systems. • Depletion of mutualistic fungal and bacterial associations. • Domination of pathogenic microbes.

10. BIO-CARBON and the relevance to improving soil health. • The Carbon factor. • A balance of active and stable carbon is required for a healthy soil to support the beneficial microbial populations. • The active carbon is the portion that can be consumed by microbes and is regarded as microbial food. • The stable portion is non microbial food and regarded as the microbial habitat.

11. What does BIO-CARBON provide? • The decomposed wood chips as well as vermi compost provide lots of active carbon or microbial food. • The biochar is a very stable form of carbon and provides the “safe” microbial habitat which has been described as the microbial reef habitat.

12. The Mycorrhizae factor. • As can be seen from the illustrative soil food web the mutualistic mycorrhizal association is a very important component of the soil food web. • This association will protect most plant roots from pathogenic nematodes and pathogens.

13. What does Mycorrhizae (VAM) do and how does it function. • VAM colonizes the host plant roots serving as additional fine root hyphae that can add several kilometers of feeder roots to the host plant. • The host plant provides the necessary carbohydrates to the VAM fungus which in turn sources the required nutrients required by the host plant. This is known as a mutualistic process.

14. Other stimulating influences assisting VAM efficiency. • Dr. Johannes Lehmann of Cornell Univ, USA found the following:- • Biochar improves the efficiency of Mycorrhizae. • There are a group of bacteria known as Mycorrhizae Helper Bacteria (MHB’s) that interact and facilitate the efficiency of VAM. • The following slide explains the interaction.

16. The Mycorrhizal mechanisms. • Biochar changes soil nutrient availability. • Biochar alters the activity of other micro organisms (MHB Mycorrhizae Helper Bacteria) that have effect on Mycorrhizae. • Biochar alters the signaling dynamics between plants and Mycorrhizal fungi. • Biochar serves a refuge for colonizing fungi and bacteria.

18. OLIVE TREES

19. VERMI COMPOST PROVIDES. • A wide range of Mycorrhizae Helper Bacteria such as the Phosphate solubilizing bacteria. • Several beneficial Pseudomonas species. • A very wide range of beneficial bacteria and fungi.

20. Disease Suppressive Microbes. • Bio-carbon is also inoculated with a wide range of disease suppressive organisms such as:- • Trichoderma. • Pseudomonas fluorescence • Agro bacterium radiobacter. • As well as the 80 odd Micro-organisms derived from EM such as:- • Actinomycetes,Photosynthetic bacteria, Fermenting fungi, yeasts, moulds and lactic acid bacteria.

21. What do we want to achieve with BIO-CARBON? • Our philosophy is that by establishing, maintaining and improving the most well known mutualistic soil microbial system the other soil health issues will follow naturally. • We believe that the major disruption of the soil food web occurs around the Mycorrhizal system. • That Bio-carbon is formulated with all 3 ingredients (VAM spores, biochar and vermi compost containing most of the MHB) to re-establish this very important soil microbial system.

22. AGRICULTURAL APPLICATIONS. • All soils that have been over worked. • Seedling establishment. • All vegetable row crops. • Re-plant problems with the following tree crops:- • Avocadoes. • Apples. • Citrus. • Stone fruit. • Vines. • All landscape applications.

23. MY CONTACT DETAILS. • Willie Pretorius. • E-mail:- cyb00018@mweb.co.za • Office tel:- 021 913 2913. • Mobile :- 083 458 9854.