MycoGreen NPK: A Better Biological Inoculant for Your Seeds

0:01 Hey everybody, Keith Burns and Dale Strickler from Green Cover here to talk a little bit about some soil organisms and an exciting new product that we have to offer. You know, there's a lot of talk about soil biology and all the benefits that brings and we're really excited about learning more about the biological activity of the soil versus just strictly the chemistry and the physics of soils. You know, Dale, one of the most talked about, but perhaps maybe one of the least understood soil organisms is mycorrhizae fungi. And part of the reason is because

0:35 It's really hard to duplicate. You can't grow this stuff in a lab like you can bacteria. Tell us a little bit about microiza, why it's important, and why it's so hard to get into your soils.

0:49 Well, mycorrhizal fungi only live, only produce on the roots of a live plant, which is why we don't have them anymore. I mean, when you have fallow periods in your crop rotation like we have over most of our history, you lose them. And so they're so critically important. They live partially inside the plant, but the

1:17 Hy go out and extend out up to two feet past the root system. So they're just everything a root supposed to do. A microisal colonized root just does 10 times better. And they bring water and they bring nutrients back to the plant. It just makes the root system far more efficient. It's how nature is supposed to work is with microisal colonized fruit.

1:46 Yeah. And so in order to help get that now there's probably remnants in most soils, but it takes a while to build those populations up. So for people that want to jump start particularly when

1:58 They're just moving from conventional to regenerative agriculture, or even if they've just had a long fallow period because of drought or anything like that. This is a good way to jumpstart the system is to apply this microbiota as an inoculant on the seed. And we've been using different microbial inoculants for quite a few years. We've looked at all the ones out on the market and we have come up with our own. We basically have contracted with a company in India to manufacture. They're going to be manufacturing in the United States soon. But a really exciting new product.

2:36 Called microgreen NPK. Dale, tell us a little bit about why this is a unique product.

2:43 Because we designed it. So you know, when you know, never completely satisfied with the products on the market now, you know, there were some products that were kind of featured what we liked, but the price was, you know, around $100 an acre and for a product that we liked and that, you know, field crop agriculture just doesn't bear that kind of cost. So when we had this opportunity to work with this company in.

3:16 India, whose CEO is probably the top microbiologist scientist in the world. You know, being the most famous microbiologist scientist in the world is like being the tallest of the seven dwarfs I guess as far as the fame. But you know, it's he's not a household name, but in microbiological science circles his name is spoken in reverence. And so when we were offered a chance to work with this guy and he said to us that he would build an inoculant to our specifications, I was like a kid in a candy store.

3:56 So this is a tremendously exciting opportunity. And so when he asked what we wanted, which we want more species, more propagules, we want more more. And we want to spend less, less, less. And that usually is not a request that ever gets fulfilled and said, 'Oh, yeah, and we we want some other can we put some other microbes with it?' So yeah, I mean you look at the comparison of the products that we've sold in the past, the diversity of species there and the number of propagules per acre and the neat.

5:20 Species are and why they're bringing the NPK to the table. Well, it's just like every organism in nature kind of is dependent upon other organisms for its existence. And mycorrhizal fungi they have isolated microbes that help, they call them mycorrhizal helping bacteria, MHBs. And so they have isolated these organisms and put them into a package that makes the mycorrhizal fungi more effective. And they do that in a number of ways. One is that four of these eight species are what I would call a disease.

6:11 Suppressing organisms. They eliminate root attacking diseases because microbial fungi and pathogenic fungi are competitive for root space. So these are bacteria that eliminate the competitors, takes away the bad guys, allows more room for the good guys. So there are a couple of nitrogen fixing microbes in there, which given the price of fertilizer is great. We have a phosphorus solubilizing bacteria in there. And then we also have—and I don't think there's really any of these on the market anywhere else—a potassium

6:55 Solubilizing bacteria. I've looked through the research on these microbes and the science is really pretty impressive, especially when you put all these microbes together and especially when you combine them with mycorrhizal fungi. These things amplify each other. It's kind of like when you put a legume and a grass together in a pasture. They help each other. It's really that kind of situation.

7:28 So if you're interested in this product, our new microgreen NPK, contact any of your green cover salespeople.

7:34 Can certainly get you more information about it. We can get you pricing on it. The full rate pricing is going to be around $1,250 an acre. And we're recommending that full rate on perennial seedings, on cash crop seedings. We're going to go a little bit of a reduced rate on cover crops and we'll be able to get that price down under $10 an acre, which really for what you're getting, you know, $10 an acre, if you fix 10 pounds of nitrogen you pay for it right away and you have all these other benefits. So let us know if you have an interest in microgreen NPK and we can get you fixed up. Thanks everybody.