How Plant Revolution’s Biofertilizers Trump the Competition
The spotlight is currently on biofertilizers – live microbial cultures made up of beneficial bacteria and fungi that are known to support the growth of plants through their myriad activities. Not only home gardeners, but commercial growers are also warming up to the idea of using biofertilizers to boost soil fertility that has been dramatically reduced due to overuse of chemicals and get a healthy product through organic growing that is free from harmful chemical residue.
How to Choose the Right Product?
But with so many products out there in the market, choosing the right one can be a daunting task. Different products achieve different objectives. Some products allow plants to utilize micronutrients better, some help in breaking down the organic matter to release more easily utilizable nutrients for the plants, others enrich the growth medium (or soil) with nitrogen fixers, thereby providing plants with a steady source of utilizable nitrogen.
In this article we are making an objective and data-backed comparison of Plant Revolution’s high quality products and how they compare with the competition. We evaluate the products on the basis of the features that make biofertilizers effective. Let us dive right in.
Commercial bioinoculant preparations differ in their ability to provide value to growing plants. While the term “biofertilizer” may be thought of encompassing all the beneficial microbes, farmers and home gardeners are becoming wiser and more knowledgeable in their quest to look for specific products to support their agriculture.
Phosphorus Solubilization and Mobilization
Phosphorus is a nutrient that is of vital importance to plant growth. If the plant cannot get enough of it, it will hamper its growth, especially during the flowering stage. Most of the phosphorus is not bioavailable, meaning it is not in a form that can be easily utilized by plants. That is where phosphate solubilizing bacteria come into the picture. These bacteria produce enzymes that release phosphorus from its bound form and make it available for easy uptake by plants.
King Crab, by Plant Revolution, is a product that contains carefully chosen naturally occurring beneficial soil microorganisms. However, as opposed to competing products in the market that contain only a few (one product contains only four, some of which are human pathogens), King Crab is a mix of 11 strains of Bacillus, Pseudomonas and a bacterium called Paenibacillus, all of which are well known for their phosphate solubilizing activity as well their ability to mobilize many other micronutrients to make them available for the plant, especially during their bloom stage. This helps in enhancing the quality of flowers and the overall vigor and yield of the plant.
Great White, another quality product by Plant Revolution, is a mycorrhizal-based microbial bioinoculant (meaning that it contains fungi that associate closely with the roots of the plant) that contains a potent mix of beneficial microbes that solubilize phosphorus and other micronutrients and make them available to the plant’s root system.
Note - The term “mycorrhiza” is made up of two Greek terms – mykos, meaning fungus, and rhiza, meaning roots. There are two types of mycorrhizae – ecto (which are associated outside the roots), and endo (where the fungus resides inside the root system).
Nitrogen Fixation
Nitrogen is a vital nutrient for plant growth. Nitrogen is part of proteins and the genetic material (DNA and RNA). While nitrogen is present in abundance in our atmosphere, it is not present in a form that is readily utilizable by plants. This is where the role of nitrogen fixing bacteria is important.
Nitrogen fixing bacteria convert atmospheric nitrogen to nitrates, a form that is easily absorbed by the plants.
Great White contains potent nitrogen fixers to provide a ready source of utilizable nitrogen compounds to the growing plant. Mycorrhizal fungi present in Great White also attract more nitrogen-fixing bacteria towards the rhizosphere. This means that the plant root system gets access to a lot of nitrogen compounds that have been produced by the activity of nitrogen fixers.
Many microbial strains in King Crab, like Paenibacillus, are effective nitrogen fixers and help the growth of the plant.
Abiotic Stress Tolerance
A growing plant denotes a dynamic ecosystem, one that encompasses many living and non-living factors, each exerting stress on the growing plant. For a plant to thrive under these stressful circumstances, it is important to provide it with a supporting sphere of influence.
Mycorrhiza are known to provide abiotic stress tolerance capabilities to the plants with whom they work closely, symbiotically. Endomycorrhizae, like those present in Great White, help the growing plant easily manage abiotic stresses like drought and salinity tolerance. Mycorrhizae, thus, support the robust growth of plants.
Microbial strains in King Crab enhance stress tolerance in their plant hosts by, and making them better at managing and tolerating stress.
Water and Nutrient Absorption
The root system of the plant is tasked with absorbing water and nutrients. The growth of a root system is limited by a lot of factors and a plant cannot simply keep on generating more roots because it wishes to absorb more water and nutrients. In such conditions, the plant can greatly benefit from mycorrhiza.
Because Great White is a mycorrhizal bioinoculant, it helps the plant in a variety of ways. The extensive network of the mycorrhiza acts as a second root system for the plant, helping absorb more water and nutrients from the soil.
Non-mycorrhizal-based biofertilizers may have different microbial strains, but they are limited by their ability to help the plant root system absorb more water and nutrients.
Parting Thoughts
Plant Revolution’s biofertilizers are meticulously created to offer complete bioinoculant support to plants to enhance their productivity. As part of a natural fertilization program, these bioinoculants will boost the plants’ ability to utilize the organic nutrients released by the beneficial microbes in the biofertilizers.
The products - Great White and King Crab - can be used by all kinds of farmers and are suitable to be used in soil, or for soilless growing using hydroponic systems and coco farming.
Before buying a product, it is necessary to understand what your specific needs are and to understand what the product will help you with. Remember the wise old adage, “Horses for courses.”
Plant Revolution has been developing unique and potent blends of high quality biofertilizers that are bridging the gap between research, knowledge, technology, and Mother Nature.