BIO-CARBON THE BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVATED CARBON.

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BIO-CARBON THE BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVATED CARBON.
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BIO-CARBON

• What is it?
• Why was it formulated?

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What is it?

• High carbon content, high beneficial microbial
  content organic based soil restorer.
• Therefore known as BIO-CARBON short for
  biologically activated carbon.
• Key words Carbon, Microbial activity,
  Biological, Organic, Soil restorer.

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Why was it formulated?

• To provide a unique blend of compensating organic
  based products in a single formulation to improve
  soil health.
• What are these products?
• Decomposed wood chips aged 12 to 16 years.
• Vermi compost.
• Biochar.
• Mycorrhizae spores.
• EM (Effective microbes)

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What is the significance of the formulation as it
relates to soil health?

• What is soil health?
• The best way to describe the state of health of
  a soil is by establishing the following-
• how far it has deteriorated from its virgin
  state due to intensive farming practices?
• Where have interruptions in the soil food web
  occurred?
• The above two questions are actually the same
  just asked with different terminology.

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The soil in a virgin state.

• ALL MICROBIOLIGAL PROCESSES ARE IN HARMONY KNOWN
  AS A BALANCED ECOSYSTEM.
• THE SOIL FOOD WEB IS PROVIDING EVERYTHING THE
  PLANTS GROWING ON IT NEEDS.

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The Soil Food Web                              
                                                  
                                                  
                                  
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Where do things go wrong in the soil food web?

• Agricultural production is synonymous with mono
  culture cropping.
• Plowing.( Soil structure destruction)
• Fertilizing. (Over fertilizing to obtain crop
  yields.)
• Irrigating. (Over irrigating, poor water quality)
• Fungicide / Insecticides / Herbicide
  applications.

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What is the result of these practices?

• Depletion of oxygen.
• Depletion of soil organic matter.
• Destruction of soil structure.
• Poor drainage.
• Depletion of beneficial microbial systems.
• Depletion of mutualistic fungal and bacterial
  associations.
• Domination of pathogenic microbes.

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BIO-CARBON and the relevance to improving soil
health.

• The Carbon factor.
• A balance of active and stable carbon is required
  for a healthy soil to support the beneficial
  microbial populations.
• The active carbon is the portion that can be
  consumed by microbes and is regarded as microbial
  food.
• The stable portion is non microbial food and
  regarded as the microbial habitat.

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What does BIO-CARBON provide?

• The decomposed wood chips as well as vermi
  compost provide lots of active carbon or
  microbial food.
• The biochar is a very stable form of carbon and
  provides the safe microbial habitat which has
  been described as the microbial reef habitat.

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The Mycorrhizae factor.

• As can be seen from the illustrative soil food
  web the mutualistic mycorrhizal association is a
  very important component of the soil food web.
• This association will protect most plant roots
  from pathogenic nematodes and pathogens.

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What does Mycorrhizae (VAM) do and how does it
function.

• VAM colonizes the host plant roots serving as
  additional fine root hyphae that can add several
  kilometers of feeder roots to the host plant.
• The host plant provides the necessary
  carbohydrates to the VAM fungus which in turn
  sources the required nutrients required by the
  host plant. This is known as a mutualistic
  process.

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Other stimulating influences assisting VAM
efficiency.

• Dr. Johannes Lehmann of Cornell Univ, USA found
  the following-
• Biochar improves the efficiency of Mycorrhizae.
• There are a group of bacteria known as
  Mycorrhizae Helper Bacteria (MHBs) that interact
  and facilitate the efficiency of VAM.
• The following slide explains the interaction.

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The Mycorrhizal mechanisms.

1. Biochar changes soil nutrient availability.
2. Biochar alters the activity of other micro
   organisms (MHB Mycorrhizae Helper Bacteria) that
   have effect on Mycorrhizae.
3. Biochar alters the signaling dynamics between
   plants and Mycorrhizal fungi.
4. Biochar serves a refuge for colonizing fungi and
   bacteria.

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OLIVE TREES
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VERMI COMPOST PROVIDES.

• A wide range of Mycorrhizae Helper Bacteria such
  as the Phosphate solubilizing bacteria.
• Several beneficial Pseudomonas species.
• A very wide range of beneficial bacteria and
  fungi.

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Disease Suppressive Microbes.

• Bio-carbon is also inoculated with a wide range
  of disease suppressive organisms such as-
• Trichoderma.
• Pseudomonas fluorescence
• Agro bacterium radiobacter.
• As well as the 80 odd Micro-organisms derived
  from EM such as-
• Actinomycetes,Photosynthetic bacteria, Fermenting
  fungi, yeasts, moulds and lactic acid bacteria.

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What do we want to achieve with BIO-CARBON?

• Our philosophy is that by establishing,
  maintaining and improving the most well known
  mutualistic soil microbial system the other soil
  health issues will follow naturally.
• We believe that the major disruption of the soil
  food web occurs around the Mycorrhizal system.
• That Bio-carbon is formulated with all 3
  ingredients (VAM spores, biochar and vermi
  compost containing most of the MHB) to
  re-establish this very important soil microbial
  system.

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AGRICULTURAL APPLICATIONS.

• All soils that have been over worked.
• Seedling establishment.
• All vegetable row crops.
• Re-plant problems with the following tree crops-
• Avocadoes.
• Apples.
• Citrus.
• Stone fruit.
• Vines.
• All landscape applications.

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MY CONTACT DETAILS.

• Willie Pretorius.
• E-mail- cyb00018_at_mweb.co.za
• Office tel- 021 913 2913.
• Mobile - 083 458 9854.