Controlled environment agriculture has always had a big problem. Plants need nature and the biology in growing media to thrive, but there hasn’t been a safe way to bring living wide spectrum biology to CEA.

Think of it this way – nature and plants’ DNA are designed to work symbiotically and in harmony with wide spectrum biology in the plants root zones. When plants are grown in CEA, they’re cut off from nature and the wide spectrum biology they need.

Not only will plants not thrive without access to wide spectrum biology, but there are also some pests and pathogens that can spin out of control without it, leading to catastrophic crop loss or ongoing disease pressure.

That’s because not all biology is bad. In fact, biology acts as a critical immune system for plants! There are so many reasons plants need beneficial biology from growing media, so removing it completely is a big problem.

In the past, CEA farmers had no choice but to use growing media that wasn’t good enough because there was nothing else available. They typically chose an inert media in an attempt to keep pests and pathogens out of their facility and used expensive and inadequate amendments to bring in individual nutrients and biology for their plants. They ended up with mediocre results.

But everything changed for CEA when bio365 invented a way to maximize results in controlled environments without any risks with the introduction of a new category of growing media that is both 100% clean and teeming with millions of living beneficial microorganisms – the wide spectrum biology plants need to grow to their full potential without that harmful parts that cause problems in controlled environments.

This scientific breakthrough was thought to be impossible until bio365 engineered a growing media that solves what were thought to be unsolvable problems for CEA by mimicking all of the good things in nature and none of the bad.

What is the New Category of Growing Media from bio365?

While bio365 growing media may look like other categories of media, it’s not. Instead, bio365 is the pioneer brand in a new category of growing media. Using science and technology, we intentionally make our media look like what people are used to. However, with 11 patents and two trade secrets behind our engineering processes, no one else can make a media that is comparable to bio365.

The soil scientists at bio365 invented the 100% clean and wide spectrum biologically-active growing media category, and we’re the only brand in the category for one very important reason – because no one else can do what we do!

Engineered Using Breakthrough Technologies to Safely Mimic Nature

To create a new category of enhanced growing media, we use the principles of biomimicry and combine the best of nature with technological innovation. Our biomimicry is based on three core elements:

How the media holds water and air and makes them available to the plant
How we engineer the biological and chemical buffering / cycling of nutrients in our media
How we deliver a diverse and resilient micro and macro biology

Plants evolved over thousands of years to flourish in a symbiotic relationship with nature and the microbiology in soil. Our biomimicry brings that relationship to CEA in a complete and safe way – as close to the way nature intended as possible.

Some of the patented and proprietary processes that are critical to bio365’s biomimicry include:

CULTURED BIOLOGY

We culture our own biology like food makers make yogurt or sourdough. We don’t use compost or worm castings, which could result in negative or pathogenic biology.

Using our patented culturing process, we make our own wide spectrum biology that is 100% consistent from batch to batch and bag to bag. In other words, since we culture our own beneficial fungi and bacteria, there is never any doubt that all batches have the same diverse microbial biomass that mimics nature.

No other growing media company does this. In fact, they can’t do it. Instead, they either use compost or they buy isolated microbes from a lab and add the lab-bought individual microbes to their batches. They have to buy new microbes from their lab suppliers all the time.

At bio365, we culture from the same mother batch generation after generation and test it every time. Our cultured biology is stable and has been proven for thousands of batches to be pest and pathogen free.

Ours is a patented and 100% proprietary process that guarantees consistency. Again, no other brand can match it or do it.

BIOCHARGE®

bioCHARGE® is our multi-patented, activated, and aged combination of clean, beneficial, wide-spectrum microbiology anchored by our high temperature, high-carbon bioCORE biochar matrix. It also has bioavailable nutrients and is what enables growers to deploy beneficial microbiology in controlled environments.

In simplest terms, bioCHARGE allows plants grown in controlled environments to signal the clean microbiology in bio365’s growing media whenever they need nutrients, water, or assistance battling pests and pathogens. It maximizes efficient on-demand delivery of water and nutrition to plants, which increases plant health, quality, resiliency, and yields.

BIOCORE® BIOCHAR

Our patented biochar was developed in conjunction with Cornell University. It’s made in high-temperature, low-oxygen conditions and derived only from softwoods, never from animal waste.

With its ultra-pure carbon matrix, bioCORE acts as an ideal host for our clean microbiology.

It also stores bioavailable nutrients and water, improves cation exchange, and improves fertilizer and water efficiency by working in conjunction with our clean biology to deliver them on-demand to the plant. In addition, bioCORE sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping to combat climate change.

BIOAVAILABLE NUTRITION

Using a proprietary process, we transform organic nutrients into their most bioavailable form, providing plants the high-quality nutrition they need to thrive. With this innovation, bio365’s pH balanced and biochemical, dual-buffered growing media help cultivators grow cleaner crops and minimize fertilizer costs while maximizing results.

ULTIMATEAIR™

Our ultimateAIR™ technology delivers class-leading air-filled porosity. ultimateAIR™ combines specially selected coarse and fine coir, sourced from different continents and then engineered and combined in our US manufacturing facilities, without perlite. This allows cultivators the crop-steering flexibility to deploy a wide-range of irrigation strategies — from frequent micro-watering to dry-stressing the plant.

Made in Controlled Environments for Controlled Environments

The new category of growing media is biologically active with wide spectrum biology, and it’s 100% clean. Everything we do at bio365 minimizes the risk of exposing the growing media to any source of contamination.

We manufacture our media 100% indoors in controlled conditions to ensure it is 100% clean and consistent for controlled environment agriculture use. Starting with our culturing process - we use an indoor, clean culture process with no compost. We culture our biology in a positive air-pressured, HEPA-filtered, controlled, and sealed environment within our factory.

Every bio365 product is made on computer-controlled mix lines to standardized recipes then packaged on carefully calibrated equipment before being palletized by a robot. Inputs are never stored outside. You'll never see compost piles or front-loaders mixing inputs at our facilities.

Humans never directly touch our inputs or media during engineering and manufacturing. In fact, all team members and visitors must decontaminate and change into protective clothing before entering our production areas and follow rigid hygiene protocols.

All bio365 growing media is engineered, manufactured, and stored in controlled access, indoor facilities, here in the USA using a quality and cleanliness process that is unmatched. For example, our facilities use HEPA-filtered, positive air-pressure environments designed to keep pests and pathogens out, and we carefully control access to our facilities, use sally ports to control exposure to the outside environment, and tightly control movements inside.

Throughout all processes, we follow a rigorous 41-step quality control protocol that ensures every batch is consistently clean and the same, batch after batch.

How bio365 Solves CEA Problems and Adds Measurable Benefits

When you give back the symbiotic relationship with the microbiology in soil that plants want but haven’t gotten in controlled environments (amendments are never adequate), the improvements are significant in terms of plant health and crop yields.

But the benefits don’t end there. Since bio365’s new category of growing media launched, our customers – from large-scale commercial growers to small home gardeners – have consistently reported the following benefits and more:

Lower Total System Costs

Nutrient savings
Improved water efficiency
Fewer amendments needed
Less media used per plant
Reduced labor needs

Improve Plant Quality and Reduce Risk

Healthier plants
Consistent and predicable outcomes
Decreased disease pressure
Less crop loss
Faster crop cycles
Higher yield per plant
Less transplant shock
Easier crop steering through water management

For commercial growers, bio365 growing media fits into existing systems and infrastructure, which means there is no need to redo the growing space. Because bio365 is plug and play, growers can focus on optimization and quickly see measurable improvements and profitability once they’ve dialed into this new category of media.

How Does bio365 Compare to Other Categories of Growing Media?

Regardless of where commercial cultivators grow crops, there used to be several growing media categories to choose from. While media and ingredients are often mixed, these categories represent the bases that were commonly used before bio365 invented a new category:

1. Stone Wool

Stone wool (Rockwool) is made from basalt rock, steel mill slag, or other minerals that are liquified at a high temperature and spun into fibers. These fibers are then formed into cubes or blocks, which can be used as horticultural media.

Stone wool is considered an inert media. Some specific inorganic crops can be grown in stone wool, but it cannot be certified as organic. Plants grown in stone wool have no access to biology or nutrients directly from the media.

2. Coconut Coir

Coconut coir (coco or coir) comes from the unused husks of coconut shells. There are both organic and not-organic forms of coco coir. It can be used for organic growing if it’s processed properly.

Coconut coir has grown in popularity in recent years as a peat alternative because it’s more sustainable, although there are concerns related to water usage and the overall carbon footprint that comes with global shipping of coir. Coconut coir is considered to be inert but not sterile.

3. Peat-Based Growing Media

Peat has long been the most popular substrate for growing food crops. It can be certified for organic growing, but much of it is not. Peat can host biology but is generally not clean.

It’s extracted from bogs where it forms from partially decomposed plants that accumulate underwater. Peat is not an easily renewable resource and extracting it destroys natural ecosystems, which has made its use controversial in recent years. Peat-based media is often referred to as “essentially sterile” and “relatively inert”.

4. Potting Soils and Compost

While potting soils and compost are not usually used by CEA growers in greenhouses, vertical farms, and indoor spaces, they are used by home gardeners and other types of growers making this another important growing media category. These types of media are generally not clean and not suitable for CEA.

Key Takeaways about Growing Media for CEA Growers

For too long, the available categories of growing media left a gaping hole for CEA. The introduction of a new category of growing media by bio365 fills that hole and solves one of the biggest problems of controlled environment agriculture by bringing nature back to the process of growing plants.

bio365 blog

A New Category of Growing Media Solves the Biggest Problem for CEA