The Essential Role of Soil Biology in Controlled Environment Cannabis Cultivation
/There is no substitute for nature. Everything from light and water to the biology in soil have an impact on how plants grow. Remove any one of them, and plants will suffer. The same is true in cannabis cultivation, including in controlled environments.
Cannabis growers take many steps to mimic nature in controlled environments through lighting and watering, but a large number of growers still aren’t using a grow media designed to mimic nature. This isn’t surprising, since most materials available to growers are not amenable to or designed for bio-mimicry.
The reality is you can’t buy plant signaling in a bottle. Creating a diverse biological community is a real challenge. Use of products such as compost or worm castings are both strategies that introduce diverse biology, but both products bring with them inherent risks. Compost, in particular, has long been associated with introducing contaminants to a controlled environment facility.
Recognizing the need for products with a diverse and resilient biology, bio365 invented the patented solution that mimics nature – a clean living grow media for controlled environment agriculture that is teeming with hundreds of thousands of living beneficial microorganisms, which are essential for plants to grow to their full potential. In fact, bio365’s biomimicry has three core elements to it:
How we hold water and air and make them available to the plant
How we engineer the biological and chemical buffering / cycling of nutrients in in our media
How we deliver a diverse and resilient micro and macro biology
But this article isn’t about bio365. It’s about the critical need for biology in grow media, so let’s get back to it.
In nature, plants communicate with the microbial life of the soil, which enables them to thrive. A controlled environment grow that lacks microbial diversity or has none of the complex biology of nature to enable proper plant signaling won’t get the best results.
In other words, sterilized or partially sterilized environments disrupt the necessary natural interactions between plants and soil because they don’t provide diverse biology and microbial life.
The solution is using diverse beneficial biology in soil where the biomimicry solution takes inspiration from what works in nature and then, uses technological innovation to engineer out the bad parts (e.g., harmful pests and pathogens), leaving only the good parts that can be safely introduced into controlled environments.
What is Biology and Why Does It Matter?
The interactions of organic matter and microbial life creates our soil biology. In nature, soil includes vast populations of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and various larger living influences. Those populations are very active, and their activities are what build soil structure, ward off disease, influence pests, and ultimately, improve plant health and potential.
Creating a synergy between the soil biology and the biology of the plant itself is the ultimate goal - this way the grower can take a step back and let the system work for itself.
Therefore, the objective for cannabis growers should always be to bring in as diverse a population as possible, as the inevitability that exists within biology will prime the plant in terms of resistance and health.
The more diverse the soil biology, the more resilient your plants will be and the higher quality your cannabis will be.
Science shows biology plays a critical role in plant health and growth. When you remove that biology, your business will lose money. It really is that simple. You’ve stunted the growth potential of every plant.
Even if you use single microbe amendments, your plants won’t be optimized because they’re not getting the diverse biology they need – the biology that has evolved over millions of years through nature.
Think of it this way – the soil you stand on is alive. Millions of organisms – biology – are busy at a microscopic level and all of their activities serve a purpose. Some organisms are deliverers, and some are cleaners. Some are fighters that protect plants, and some are decomposers that break down organic material and release nutrients. There are even some predators that feed on bacteria, and then release nitrogen that plants use.
Bottom-line, every microbe plays an important role, and when you remove all of them to create an inert grow media, there are significant consequences to your crops and the revenue you can generate from those crops.
Biology Improves Nutrient Availability and Uptake
Microbial activity increases nutrient availability. Some soil bacteria actually have symbiotic relationships with plants, which leads to increased nutrient availability. In addition, some fungi help extend plant roots so they can better tap into nutrients.
Furthermore, there is a process in nature called buffering that enables plants to access the nutrients they need when they need them from biological and chemical reservoirs. However, in controlled environment grows, horticultural media are rarely designed to have a chemical or biological buffering.
In many situations this is simply a limitation of the horticultural media being used. It has no capacity to hold on to or buffer nutrients. However, in some situations, this is desirable. We’ll cover this topic in more detail in a future article. For now, the key takeaway is this – plants grown in nature experience the natural plant / microbial signaling processes designed through thousands of years of evolution to ensure proper nutrition. For cannabis, we need to help it along. A key part of that strategy is to deliver nutrients and water in ways that mimic nature.
When a media has a diverse biology, a grower can add more complex plant- or animal-derived nutrient sources, because the biology in the media will break them down and release ions for plant uptake. Also, if fertilized with salt-based fertilizer, nutrients that are not required immediately by the plant can be used by microorganisms as they grow or are absorbed onto surfaces in the soil.
In a non-buffered system, the majority of nutrients that the plant doesn’t uptake is lost from the system. Conversely, the combination of chemical and biological buffering enables a grower to use fewer nutrients.
Bottom-line, when your plants have access to wide-spectrum biology through the grow media, they can signal when they need food. Biologically activated grow media stores nutrients and make those nutrients available to your plants on demand – only when needed. This means no guess-work for your growers and leads directly to savings on fertilizer and other amendment costs.
Biology Combats Pests and Pathogens
Biology in soil is the immune system for plants. Sterile, inert soil removes the good, beneficial biology that your plants need to grow to their full potential. As a result, using an inert soil actually reduces plant health and crop yield because plants aren’t getting what they need – biology.
In other words, sterile soil is immunocompromised soil. When you use it, you’re stripping away plants’ immune systems, and you’re rendering your plants defenseless to disease.
The more diverse the microbial life, the more resilient the plant. In fact, diversity enhances plant resistance to pests and diseases. These beneficial soil microorganisms may affect harmful members of the soil community more directly through competition, parasitism, or other mechanisms.
Living soil benefits both the plant and the grower and creates a feedback loop between the plant and microbes. The feedback loop between soil bacteria and the plant creates nutrition, stability, and pest resistance.
Bacteria and non-pathogenic fungi can also stimulate the production of plants’ own natural defensive chemistry. This will allow a more rapid and vigorous response to attacks by pathogenic bacteria, fungi, and viruses.
Depending on the species involved, this induced systemic resistance (ISR) may activate plant defenses against soil pathogens and some foliar pathogens and insects. In simplest terms, the chemical signaling process allows the plant to defend itself and use the biology within the soil to resist the impact of pests or disease.
Rhizosphere bacteria assists in this process through competing with pathogenic microbial life and by producing antimicrobial agents. These “beneficials” stabilize the soil, starve out harmful organisms, and provide the plant with the necessary stimulation to trigger resistance to these pathogens. Therefore, the complexity and diversity of the soil is crucial to ensuring that these beneficials thrive, as the natural balance within the biology will stimulate resilience within both the plant and the soil.
For example, a plant may release chemicals in response to pests, which may then attract and trigger nematodes to attack the parasite or to signal to other plants to produce volatile compounds that will increase their resistance to the pest or pathogen.
In addition, encouraging both the plant’s natural defense biology and a diverse microbial population will help to fight pests from all angles. For example, Trichoderma species produce a wide range of antibiotic substances and are capable of both out-competing certain soil pathogens and parasitizing others.
How to Measure Biology
Microbial biomass is crucial to cannabis cultivators because it quantifies how much beneficial biology is in your soil as an overall metric. You can use the microbial biomass measurement to learn the total amount of beneficial biology that is in the soil or substrate you use for your plants.
A high microbial biomass in your grow media can lead to increased yields, quality, and profits. Therefore, you want to be certain that your substrate includes clean wide spectrum biology.
To put this into perspective, take a look at the chart below and see how the microbial biomass of inert soil and typical farm soil compare to the microbial biomass of bio365’s growing media.
As the chart shows, inert soil has a microbial biomass of 0 up C/g compared to 2,200 up C/g in bio365 growing media, which contains hundreds of thousands of beneficial biology strains.
Since a higher microbial biomass means plants can access more of the beneficial biology they need to thrive, you’ll end up with healthier and more vital plants overall when you use a grow media with a high microbial biomass. Ultimately, you’ll have better yields and higher quality crops that you can sell for higher prices.
Key Takeaways about Soil Biology and Cannabis Cultivation
The biology in soil is essential to plant growth, and contrary to long-held beliefs, controlled environment cannabis cultivators can bring diverse living biology into their facilities using bio365’s patented grow media. Contact us to learn how you can achieve better results by bringing beneficial biology into your controlled environment cannabis grow facility.