Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Role of humus in yield and nutrient value
Excerpts:

" Numerous observations and the results of accurate laboratory experiments
have
proved the positive effect of humus on the growth and metabolism of
plants."

"Vegetative composts, manure, and humic substances not only activate plant
growth and increase their yields but also improve their nutrient value
which in
a matter of great importance. Plants grown in fields fertilized with manure
are
richer in vitamins and other valuable substances than those grown in
nonfertilized fields."

"Data exist which show variations in amino-acid composition of plant
tissues in
the presence of different fertilizers. According to Sheldon, Blue and
Albrecht
(1948), lucerne and some other plants grown on fertilized fields, have a
different quantitative and qualitative amino-acid composition than those
plants
grown in nonfertilized fields. The highest amino-acid content was found in
plants grown with manure."

"According to our observations and the available data in literature, the
active
principles of humus and composts are not the mineral nutrients present in
them
but the organic substances and the biologically active metabolites of
microbes.
Mineral substances applied in amounts equivalent to the composts do not
have an
effect comparable to the latter."

"The material presented by us shows that animal and plant residues and
organic
substances in general have a favorable effect only after their
decomposition and
processing by microorganisms, i.e., after they have been transformed into
humus.
The active substances of humus are not the animal or plant residues but the
products of microbial metabolism, the products of secondary synthesis."

Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of Microbiology
N. A. Krasil'nikov, SOIL MICROORGANISMS AND HIGHER PLANTS
Published by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow 1958
Published for THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, D.C. and THE
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, USA
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010112Krasil/010112krasil.ptIIIa.ht
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