It’s called “agribusiness” for a reason…
Matt Roth is a lot of things:
- Father - and Grandfather - of the Year.
- Husband & Dance Partner.
- Plant Nerd (sometimes mad scientist).
- Native Floridian.
- Self Taught Ecologist.
- Certified Accountant.
- Certifiable Good Person.
(Matt wears a LOT of hats.)
While he always puts his family and faith at the top of his priorities, his love for nature still sits at the top of the short list.
Right next to it? Business owner.
Matt’s true niche, his calling in life, is running a premier agribusiness in Central Florida. Seeds of Life and its parent company, The Magnolia Company, are industry leading experts in sustainable agribusiness practices, especially when it comes to the magnolia family.
Emphasis on “sustainable.”
At the end of the day, a business is a business, and Matt’s got payroll to worry about. Payroll comes from profits, which come from tree sales.
Matt can’t help but wonder, “What about the environment?”
Turns out, profit and sustainability aren’t at odds.
One of the biggest lessons learned from decades of professional gardening?
Patience.
In an agribusiness, you quite literally reap what you sow. Matt understands that when you take care of the Earth, it takes care of you.
Thanks to Matt and countless teams of scientists, engineers, and even public health and environmentalist organizations, Seeds of Life sports state-of-the-art technologies that minimize water use, waste, and chemical agents on the farm. These projects are always investments up front, but in time, they more than pay for themselves.
The Latest Investment
When you think of technology, you probably picture something electronic. Technology isn’t always mechanical, though. In this case, it’s biological.
Meet Azospirillium brasilense.
Also known as “Azo Root.”
Azospirillium brasilense is the scientific name for a very special kind of bacteria. Microorganisms, like bacteria and fungi, play critical roles in our natural environment. It’s not uncommon for these tiny heroes to have symbiotic relationships with the plants that also inhabit an ecosystem. Symbiotic relationships are nature’s “quid pro quo” agreement, so both organisms get something out of coexisting in close proximity.
Our azo bacteria have an unspoken arrangement with plant roots, and while the discovery of this relationship isn’t hot off the press, its emergence into the agribusiness market is.
It’s all about nutrients.
Plants rely on photosynthesis for their energy production, but their roots are where it’s really at. A healthy root system will make or break a plant’s well being and visible growth. Roots are how plants access essential nutrient components, like water and nitrogen.
Nitrogen is the miracle molecule plants rely on to power their photosynthesis reactions at a cellular level, which is why many fertilizers contain some form of nitrogen. Unfortunately, excess nitrogen introduced chemically into environments and gardening practices wreaks havoc on the environment, causing harmful and suffocating algae blooms in bodies of water and contaminating important ground water sources. Anything an agribusiness owner can do to reduce their use of nitrogen fertilizers is a win for the environment.
One Bacteria’s Trash is Another Plant’s Treasure
Azospirillum brasilense, like every other living organism, requires some kind of nutrients to live and reproduce. And, they also produce waste.
Not all waste is wasted; in fact, the waste products from these bacteria are extremely useful to plants. Plant roots provide a habitat to the bacterial colony, and the root ball is a highway for the nutrients the plant can access. The bacteria get access to the nutrient highway when they attach themselves to a root system.
As the bacteria colonize and thrive in the plant’s root ball, they produce a hormone that stimulates plant growth. They also have this wild ability to take atmospheric nitrogen and fix it to the plant’s roots - it’s natural fertilizer!
Because of their ability to act as biostimulants and biofertilizers, Azospirillum brasilense falls into a special kind of bacterial category, known as “plant growth promoting rhizobacteria.” We’ll just say “rhizobacteria” for short.
Rhizobacteria are kinds of bacteria that have symbiotic relationships with plant roots. While these relationships can be parasitic and therefore detrimental in nature, many (like the one we see in Azospirillum) are exceedingly beneficial.
How does it work?
The product Matt is trying out is called Azo Root. We’re not being sponsored by the makers of this product - we’re just doing some honest reporting on a really cool microbial technology!
By taking a bottle of freeze dried bacteria, reactivating it with water, and waiting a week, Matt ends up with this vessel of bacterial brew… yummy!
(Just kidding, please don’t consume Azo Root.)
It’s got a compost-like odor to it, and Matt calls it his microbe tea. He then uses this tea to inoculate the roots (or soon to be roots) of his magnolia propagations.
Why “Lightning in a Bottle?”
Lightning is fascinating. You don’t realize it, but lightning plays a key role in the nitrogen cycle, which is the way nitrogen from our atmosphere becomes integrated into our environment’s topsoil.
Our atmosphere is 78% nitrogen gas. These gas molecules are composed of two nitrogen atoms bonded strongly together (N2). Because it’s in a gaseous form, plants can’t use it. Lightning provides the energetic catalyst needed to break the bonds between the nitrogen molecules.
When the bond breaks, the free nitrogen atoms rapidly rebond to available oxygen atoms, creating a molecule of nitrous oxide (N2O). It’s now a trio: 2 nitrogen atoms dancing with a single oxygen atom.
If 3 is a crowd, 4 is a party.
Nitrous oxide easily dissolves in water, so nearby raindrops pick up these hitchhiking molecules. They arrive on the ground, transformed after recombining with atoms in the rainwater, into their final usable form made of 4 atoms: nitrates (NO3), which house 1 nitrogen atom and 3 oxygen atoms.
These nitrates are atmospheric plant fertilizer.
Azospirillum bypasses the lightning, taking in gaseous nitrogen (N2) and converting it into usable nitrates.
See? Lightning in a bottle.
The Root of the Matter
“Everything in propagation is about roots,” says Matt.
Propagation is how Matt chooses to grow new trees from his prestigious cultivars. The propagations are cuttings from the parent trees, so the new young tree will be genetically identical to the parent. It’s how the company is able to guarantee a quality product.
Normally, a propagation will put out one big taproot that circles the start pot. That’s one single highway for nutrients to be absorbed into the plant. If the highway taproot doesn’t reach parts of the pot, those nutrients go by the wayside, unused.
“This is a problem for growers. A plant that crams all its roots in one spot instead of a dispersed grouping has limited access to resources for growth,” says Matt.
When Matt introduces Azospirillum to the propagation, the roots look drastically different.
Instead of a single large taproot, the propagations put out root balls: networks of smaller, fibrous roots in a dense mass. Instead of a single highway, this network of roots is like a downtown grid system. Nutrients from the far west corner and far east corner of the pot can travel through the roots and reach the parts of the plant that need them most. Nothing goes to waste.
This is huge! The resulting propagations grow faster, which means they develop leaves and stature more quickly. The plants are also more drought tolerant and require upsizes in their pots sooner.
“It’s a very visible difference - I’ve never grown a crop like this.”
Small Bacteria, Huge Environmental Impact
Once the roots are inoculated with the bacteria, the bacteria are there for the life of the tree no matter where it goes. It’s also reported that the bacteria play well with beneficial fungi, which Matt also uses for the health of his trees. Like roots, the fungi expand the tree’s access to nutrients and allow for communication networks and resource sharing between trees. Microbes for the win!
If a grower succeeds at inoculating propagations with these rhizobacteria, the tree requires less fertilizer over the course of its lifetime. This is a massive win for growers and consumers alike, who always want to reduce their chemical fertilizer use. For someone like Matt, who regularly does annual crops of 100,000+ propagations, this rhizobacteria is no small thing.
The bacterial brew is an investment in and of itself, but the benefits? They far outweigh the cost. With time and patience, these mighty microbes more than pay for themselves in money AND an environment saved.