permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 1:54 PM, Scott Pittman <scott@permaculture.org>
wrote:

> Thanks for posting this Lawrence, this is one of the best examples of
> whole system thinking that I know of.  I wish I could share it with
> everyone.
>

You could share it with Facebook friends or with other mailing lists.

"*Published on Apr 5, 2017*

In this video, natural health expert and Mercola.com founder Dr. Joseph
Mercola interviews Dr. Zach Bush about soil health, intercellular
communication and their effects on human health. To read health articles,
visit Mercola.com."
This is a big topic these days.

Here is an exercise for you Scott. What are your thoughts about this? We
are talking about bacteria and fungi interacting with plants for
nourishment and survival while also nourishing the host plants. My question
is how do bacteria and fungi relate to each other while doing their job
interacting with plants when each helps plants acquire phosphorous and too
much plant available phosphorous causes plants to shut down the process.

Some of my thoughts on soil health:

Soil with balanced macro and micro nutrients will more rapidly encourage
larger (than in soil with unbalanced nutrients) populations of beneficial
microorganisms which in turn will cause the generation of more organic
matter and humus which will lead to greater soil water retention, tilth,
friability and fertility and reduce the need for supplemental irrigation.

It goes without saying that farming in harmony with Nature and the
environment plus nonuse of synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers
and heavy use of tillage could solve many plant disease problems.

Humanity has been feeding itself for many thousands of years, homesteaders,
tribes, agrarian societies, entire civilizations. Traditional systems could
be stressed to feed the growing global population. Answer: keep them in
place, revise and improve them, stabilize such natural farming systems,
learn from indigenous farmers. Use permaculture design, principles and
methods in tandem with robust natural agricultural systems, highly
developed and refined. We need an encyclopedia on how to do this and an
accompanying textbook. The task is divided between the public, private
sector and the government.

It wouls be interesting to explore the relationship between soil-borne
bacteria that enhance the phosphate stress response
in plants and the effect plant root colonized VAM's have on increased
phosphate uptake, how each process is affected by the other
and how that might be regulated by plant, bacteria or fungi for maximum
benefit to each.
Here are two interesting resources on VAMs:
1)
Mycorrhizal Associations: Arbuscular Mycorrhizas
https://mycorrhizas.info/vam.html
2)
Use of Vesicular - Arbuscular Mycorrhiza (VAM) as Biofertilizer for
Horticultural Plants in Developing Countries - Springer
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-011-3176-6_8#page-1

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-011-3176-6_8

Abstract

Mycorrhiza is the product of an association between a fungus and plant
root. Vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza (VAM) is formed by the symbiotic
association between certain phycomycetous fungi and angiosperm roots. The
fungus colonizes the root cortex forming a mycelial network and
characteristic vesicles (bladder-like structures) and arbuscules (branched
finger-like hyphae). The mycelia are aseptate or septate ramifying
intercellularly thus causing little damage to tissues. The arbuscules are
the most characteristic structures, formed intracellularly and probably
having an absorptive function. The vesicles are terminal swellings of
hyphae formed inter and intracellularly having a storage function. There
are six genera of fungi belonging to Endogonaceae which have been shown to
form mycorrhizal associations: Glomus, Gigaspora, Acaulospora,
Entrophospora Sclerocystis and Scutellospora. These are mainly identified
by their characteristic spores and sporocarps which are formed mostly in
the soil surrounding the roots and rarely inside the roots. The
identification of VAM fungi directly from roots has been difficult. One of
the striking features of VAM fungi is their very wide host range which
includes angiosperm species belonging to almost all the families. Even the
roots of some aquatic plants are colonized by VAM fungi.
Brendan Niemira : USDA ARShttps://www.ars.usda.gov/peopl
e-locations/person?person-id=43393

....did research on red clover exudates (affecting soil microbiology?)
increasing a plant's ability to uptake phosphorous.
Maybe this was in some way connected to an increase in phosphate stress
response.
This was mentioned in several Sanet posts years ago. I think someone tried
to commercialize production of this exudate.

Contribution of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to utilization of
organic sources of phosphorus by red clover in a calcareous soil
http://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/files/379209/Feng%20et%20al%202003.pdf
Phosphorus deficiency in red clover promotes exudation of ... - NCBI
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17260144>
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17260144
by K Yoneyama - ‎2007 - ‎Cited by 221
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=238862353653498900>
- ‎Related articles
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&q=related:FAS7iwucUAP1EM:scholar.google.com/>
*Phosphorus* deficiency in *red clover* promotes *exudation* of orobanchol,
the signal for mycorrhizal symbionts and germination stimulant for root
parasites.
Phosphorus deficiency in red clover promotes exudation of ...
<http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00425-006-0410-1>
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00425-006-0410-1
by K Yoneyama - ‎2007 - ‎Cited by 222
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=238862353653498900>
- ‎Related articles
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&q=related:FAS7iwucUAP1EM:scholar.google.com/>
*Phosphorus* deficiency in *red clover* promotes *exudation* of orobanchol,
the signal for mycorrhizal symbionts and germination stimulant for root
parasites.


[PDF]Plant mechanisms to optimise access to soil phosphorus - CiteSeerX
<http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.971.188&rep=rep1&type=pdf>
citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.971.188&rep=rep1...pdf
by AE RichardsonA - ‎2009 - ‎Cited by 205
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=5245700787367287107>
- ‎Related articles
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&q=related:Q5kDvRJ5zEifFM:scholar.google.com/>
capacity to supply P in a soluble form that is available for *plant uptake*
(i.e. as ..... their *ability to increase* the effective length and surface
area of roots ..... anions *exuded* from white lupin cluster roots (Johnson
et al. 1996 ...... *red clover* and ryegrass from an Oxisol as affected by
P and model humic *substances* application. 1.
Chapter 5 Plant Roots and Microorganisms - ScienceDirect
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166248108705634>
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166248108705634
May 12, 2008 - The cooperation of higher *plants* with living
microorganisms occurs most intensively and ... usually *increased*
exudation from tomatoes and subterranean *clover*. .... This is true even
though the total quantity of *substances exuded* may be ..... The
efficiency in nutrient *uptake*, especially of *phosphorus*, by the ...
Analysis of Phosphate Acquisition Efficiency in Different Arabidopsis ...
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC59875/>
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › NCBI › Literature › PubMed Central (PMC)
by RA Narang - ‎2000 - ‎Cited by 142
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=12125372113180787899>
- ‎Related articles
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&q=related:u4SRp7H5RajfcM:scholar.google.com/>
Significant differences were found in root morphology, phosphate *uptake*
kinetics, ... rhizosphere acidification, and the *ability* of roots to
penetrate substrates. ... *Phosphorus* is a major mineral nutrient required
by *plants*, but is one of the most ..... of growth medium of high organic
acid *exuding*, phosphate-efficient accessions ...



A thread about this in the permaculture list:

[permaculture] Breeding plants in diverse communities may lead to more
productive plants

https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture/2014-November/045377.html
Niemira's post was in the Usenet newsgroup, bionet.plants:

Article: 5512 of bionet.plants
From: niemirab at student.msu.edu
<http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture>  (Brendan A.
Niemira)
Newsgroups: bionet.plants
Subject: Re: Mycorhizzae vs. Fertilizer
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 1995  11:04 est


For agronomic crops, you're talking about vesicular arbuscular
mycorrhizae (VAM), a symbiotic endomycorrhizal fungus.  These are
ubiquitous anyway, and
not very host-specific, so there is very little need to inoculate the field
in order
to introduce them.  The big trick is getting them to colonize your crop
plant to such an extent that fertilizer inputs can be reduced.  You can a)
build up the population in the soil such that even moderately active fungi
result in
heavy coloniazation, b) put something in the soil to stimulate the activity
of smaller populations to get heavy colonization.

Crop rotations have been shown to have a definite impact on the population
dynamics of VAM, and work is currently being done (by me, among others) to
determine how the different crop plants differentially select for certain
species of VAM among all that are availible in the soil.

Other workers have shown that certain natural, plant-produced chemicals can
stimulate the existing VAM to higher levels of activity.  These
chemicals were originally derived from red clover, a popular sequence in
crop
rotations.  This may shed some light on why rotations are effective
w/regard to VAM.


More:

[permaculture] mycorhizae thread - this gem of info: plant selection of
appropriate VAM's & VAM-stimulating natural plant
extractshttps://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture/2013-March/043074.html

There are more posts in this thread in the sanet-mg archives that this
forwarded post from me was included in.
There were replies with a lot more info on :
1) "determine how the different crop plants differentially select for
certain
species of VAM among all that are availible in the soil."
2) "that certain natural, plant-produced chemicals can
stimulate the existing VAM to higher levels of activity.  These
chemicals were originally derived from red clover"
[a group actually produced such extracts to make a marketable ag product
from]

More:

[permaculture] red clover extract that stimulates vesicular arbuscular
mycorrhizae - Google
Searchhttps://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture/2013-March/043077.html

<>

This seems to have to do with Alia's information about available phosphate
levels in soil regulating a host plant's colonization of mycorrhizal
fungi on its roots
resulting in increased phosphate uptake;
i.e. phosphate is a regulator of this process.
The article quoted below goes into this:
The regulation of arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis by phosphate in pea
involves early and systemic signalling events
http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/content/62/3/1049.full

<>

http://aem.asm.org/content/57/2/434

Isolation and Identification of Vesicular-Arbuscular Mycorrhiza-Stimulatory
Compounds from Clover (Trifolium repens) Roots

Muraleedharan G. Nair1*,
Gene R. Safir2 and
Jose O. Siqueira2†

+ Author Affiliations

1Bioactive Natural Products Laboratory, Department of Horticulture and
Pesticide Research Center, and Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, 2
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824

ABSTRACT

Two isoflavonoids isolated from clover roots grown under phosphate stress
were characterized as formononetin (7-hydroxy,4′-methoxy isoflavone) and
biochanin A (5,7-dihydroxy,4′-methoxy isoflavone). At 5 ppm, these
compounds stimulated hyphal growth in vitro and root colonization of an
undescribed vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza, a Glomus sp. (INVAM-112). The
permethylated products of the two compounds were inactive. These findings
suggest that the isoflavonoids studied may act as signal molecules in
vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis.

In a sanet-mg post, years ago, Dale Wilson mentioned that he knew of a
researcher in Ohio (or nearby state) who took an inventory of
plant-specific VAMs in his region.


-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared