Microbes and crop residue

Larry Fien of planet Earth Agronomy talks, microbes and crop stubble residue. People have spent more time and energy at both the university level and at the commercial level to identify the organisms which are most efficient at converting that residues into plant available carbon and releasing the nutrients that are, of course, tied up. Intracellular inside all of that residue, all of the nitrogen and phosphorus, the potassium, all of the zinc, manganese, copper, all the nutrients and micronutrients that are in there. And those microbes, a lot of research has been done actually in the last 20 years. But a lot of it's really the most I think productive research has really happened in about the last five years. And some of that is due to cellulosic ethanol. When cellulosic ethanol was first thought to be a potential opportunity from a fuel standpoint, a number of microbes were identified as being very effective at breaking down cellulose and those microbes were brought forward. So these are naturally occurring organisms that are in the environment. But what scientists have figured out is how to put consortiums of them together where they live in a community that's highly productive, meaning some of the microbes that are in there are only in the consortium to provide food and to start the populations of the other microbes, microbes that can be so beneficial.