Microbes at work

Microbes at work

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Larry Fiene describes how a microbe product called excavator works to eat away crop residues in a field. When the microbes are sprayed on standing corn stalks, they haven't been rolled. They haven't been crushed. You have stocks standing in a field. The microbes will hit all over those stocks wherever there's cracks. These are microscopic organisms. These are tiny spores that can't be seen with the naked eye. So they're super small. When you put them into solution with water and you mix it up, it's cloudy for a period of time, but then it actually will get almost clear. You can't even tell they're really in there. They're that small. So where I'm going is a crack on the side of a corn stock would look like the Grand Canyon to these things, you know, because it's so big. So they'll go right into those cracks. But more importantly, what we're seeing is the land on the top of that stock that's been cut off by the combine and they will start to leach their way down in. So what they do is they eat that corn stock from the inside out. All that pith material that's very soft, that's in the middle. That's what's targeted by the microbes. First they feed on that and they eat all that out. That takes the flexibility and some of the strength out of the stocks when the center core is eaten out. And then you have this hollow kind of crunchy corn stock that's left in. It's very brittle. It shatters very easy when you eat it with a vertical till or a strip till unit. Nature at work to make life easier.
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