Feeding the Good Bacteria Cut Pepper Root Rot to 6%

0:00 I think I'm the last one, the one last speaker. I'm not really, I don't know, I do not know natural farming very well, but I start to learn natural farming. And I would like to talk about natural farming in the view of plant pathologies, plant diseases. So I made a title, Biological Control of Soil-borne Diseases and Natural Farming. Like the previous speaker, Kim Eun-ja, Eun-ja Kim told that she wanted to present next year after she completed many works.

0:53 It was the same to me. I had maybe two or four slides of IMO study to understand the underlying mechanism of the natural farming in terms of the disease control. But Professor Kim, [unclear] me pretty much. So I made time and I made a few more slides and added some slides. I may take maybe a little more time, maybe five in this case, not too much. So I would like to talk about this biological control and how it might be linked to natural farming.

1:40 And the biological control became popular in 1980s in America. Before that, people used a lot of pesticides to control pests and plant diseases, and it made a lot of environmental problems, problems. As you know, DDT is one of the examples. So Rachel Carson made a report, wrote a book, Silent Spring. So after congressmen, so after American people read that book, they need to know that we have to control

2:26 this pesticide. And then there was a famous scientist, James Cook. He was a USDA ARS research scientist, and they grow wheat in America, northern area of America. They grow a lot of wheat, and wheat has take-all disease, very severe. So the name of the disease is take-all. And then after they grow the wheat for five years, all of sudden this disease become less and less and they want to know why it is that so

3:13 and they found out that it was due to the Pseudomonas species, which is bacteria. So they called it disease-conducive soil, or disease-suppressive soil. Because there was that time that scientists tried to emphasize that we have to do sustainable or integrated pest management. Now it becomes, in Korea, environment- friendly agriculture. Now I think it is now developed into the natural farming itself. So the biological control is accomplished through many ways, and first

4:03 they started with one specific organism, like a Pseudomonas species, which controls take-all disease; Gaeumannomyces graminis is the fungus name. And then they started, so they started the bacteria which is very usually they talk about antifungal bacteria, so they could control plant disease. They look for this bacteria from [unclear], and then they look for maybe not just bacteria, maybe fungi. So they are looking for the Trichoderma species. This is very famous and developed as commercial commercial biopesticide, I think, worldwide. And another one, they looked at

4:51 Pythium oligandrum to control damping-off plant disease, and also non-pathogenic Fusarium. You know, Fusarium wilt is the famous disease, and this non-pathogenic Fusarium study was done in Japan specifically. So they used non-pathogenic Fusarium species to control Fusarium wilt, and also they used this one to control nematode, not just the fungus type, but nematode. So they called all these mycoparasites. And it was 1980s, or 1980s and 1990s. Then there was a famous scientist in Auburn University, Kloepper.

5:39 He suggested that there is plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, which control plant disease, also promote plant health, plant growth. Now we know that this bacteria can induce systemic resistance, make plant more strong to plant disease, like similar to the immune system in animal. And nowadays, people are working on endophytic bacteria, which reside inside of the plant, inside of plant itself. Then they fix nitrogen, not like a nodulating rhizobium, but they fix nitrogen, and they also produce auxin, which is the plant hormone. So now, after

6:27 they started on this one around that time people started about organic amendment, which is compost, which might be very similar concept to natural farming. They pile up all the plant residue and ferment it and put it into the soil, which there is a pathogen, plant disease, and the disease seems to be controlled. And not seems to be statistically significant. Scientists always make a statistical analysis and then you see, is this significant or not so they made all kind of organic method the plant residue with the chicken litter and cow dung, and cow dung compost, all

7:11 sort of things. It's about biological control. And actually I do not have much slides, so I want to show what I have been through, just some of the slides for specific disease. This is the mechanism: the antibiosis; site competition for the infection site; and siderophore: the bacteria produce iron chelators, so the pathogen cannot use iron, so that pathogen's growth does not grow very well; and nutrient competition, and systemic induced resistance,

7:59 which I talked about already. And this one, out of this, this is a little out of this topic few years ago I suggested some proposal to the government. And in Korea there is a word for microbes: effective microorganisms. And I think this term was originated from Japan. Korean people try to use this effective microorganism. One of them is the yeast used a lot. So in this case, the Korean Agricultural Technology Center, many cities have all these fermentation facilities. They grow these bacteria.

8:45 and even for the cow, livestock, and they distribute to the farmer for free. So farmers can take this product without any money. They get this one and then spray to the crop field. So it's popular now. They use not only EM, which might be yeast, but there could be more than yeast. But the photosynthetic bacteria, maybe cyanobacteria, any kind of bacteria, all kinds of biological agents, some bacteria, or fungi.

9:34 And this is my study. When I came here, this is the first time I had to start something. In America, they produce rice somewhere, not everywhere, planting rice seed through the airplane. And Louisiana is one of those states. And in case of Korea, the Hyundai Asan company, they have a big farm. They plant rice seed through the airplane and grow the rice. In that case, seedling diseases occur often. And in case of Korea, for not a big farmer, if the farmer is too busy to do something, they plant rice seed just by hand.

10:20 And in certain cases, when the weather is very cloudy, no seed emerged at all. All these red color seeds are dead. And all those [unclear] seeds are dead. So I started to think that maybe there might be some bacteria that could control this kind of disease. And I just kept some pathogens as very severe pathogens. And then at that time, this idea is that if I provide some nutrient to the bacteria, biocontrol agent bacteria, maybe it controls plant disease better. And it shows that all these, this is bacterial biocontrol agent, and this is not inoculated,

11:09 and this one has inoculated one but this one was not severe but it was significant and this is how I had some concept that this is bacteria these are different carbon sources, and the bacteria used alanine very well, and [unclear] very well, but the fungus uses this kind of [carbon source] very well, but they do not use sorbitol or galactose or lactose. So I want to show that there is difference in terms of the carbon utilization between the fungi and the bacteria and we added this concept to seed coating of the rice seed.

12:03 And we had a group which is non-inoculated, so no Pythium. And here is a disease development. The base means that there is some formulation, Pythium, the fungus, but compared to this one, we add alanine or mannitol or sorbitol, which the fungus cannot use, they control it very well. And I will skip; it shows good results in seedling emergence, and also in the field, the plot which is [unclear] square meters, it shows the good yield. And in the pepper,

12:55 [this one] is control. The Phytophthora root rot is developed. They do not apply any bacteria or [unclear]. And this one, they applied bacteria and treated, and looks much healthier. And I added the same concept. The arabinose is used very well, but Phytophthora capsici, which is the pathogen of the root rot of the pepper, does not use it very well. So I added those ones. And this, Phytophthora capsici, has severe, say... no, I'm sorry, this is non-inoculated control, and no disease at all.

13:47 Phytophthora capsici, the plant pathogen, alone, 81%. Almost all the plants got disease, about 80 percent. If you add bacteria, it is controlled, but if you have those specific carbon sources, they control better. And this one, this slide is for understanding what happening what happened after we inoculated bacteria how the bacteria moves and we made some bacteria which can fluoresce in green color So this is a wild-type bacteria, which induces systemic resistance. Without

14:37 transformation with the green fluorescent gene, you cannot see any green color under fluorescent microscope. But this is the mutant that has green fluorescent gene. And if you grow rice seed in hydroponic culture, this bacteria goes inside. This is the dynamic inside, and they only lose a little bit. And [in] seven days, [unclear]. Okay, I finished. All those works are to develop

15:26 the better biological control agent, to understand some mechanism, how the bacteria attach the rice seed, root, very well, how it goes, how it stays long. And now, just this year, I started to study on indigenous microorganisms in natural farming soil, which Professor Kim's students studied in the Paju farm. And I brought those soil, actually they brought that soil, and I [studied the] population of those one. And I would expect that maybe there are more diverse bacteria

16:20 or more diverse fungal population in IMOs or natural farming soil. But I cannot make a conclusion yet, but it was not really what I thought. Now, this is the word which you use often: IMO. So I learned... I asked this one often to Professor Kim: what is IMO, and what is the indigenous microorganism. And when I talked with Chris Trump, maybe it is natural forest compost under the tree, because there

17:05 is a natural population of the fungus and some bacteria too. So the IMO 1 and IMO 2, and IMO 3 and IMO 4. And this soil must be originated from the [unclear] where they want to grow the crops. And I started it. So this is per gram of soil, the colony forming unit, which is, say, the number of the body of the bacteria or the fungi, times 10 to the 5. And this is control soil. I think this is, they grow the peanut, Zacheous's experiment.

17:51 And so control soil, natural farming soil, conventional soil, organic soil, there are a lot of bacteria in control soil, but less bacteria in natural, or conventional, organic. We do not know exactly how it happened, and we are doing replicate again. We did replicate, but my students and Professor Kim's students had different results. Why it is so, I have to check again. But it's reliable. Anyway, there are more bacteria, more fungi, and we cannot determine whether to do it. Anyway, number doesn't mean [unclear].

18:38 So maybe natural, I thought natural farming soil has more, more of the fungi. That's what I thought, because you add rice bran and those ones. But maybe not. And this is natural, again. We are doing the second experiment. And we just focused on the fungi. Natural soil, 18; organic, 13; and conventional, 7. So there is more fungi in natural soil in the second experiment. But this number, 18 times 10 to the 2, 18 times 10 to the 2, in terms of micro population,

19:29 may not be significantly statistically different, but we have to check again. But this slide says something about IMO things. This we started IMO 1, IMO 2, IMO 3, and IMO 4. This is maybe not really fresh because IMO 1 we brought it and put in the refrigerator. Maybe two weeks later we started it. But IMO 4 maybe made it more fresh. But anyway, say that IMO1 has a lot of bacteria, 10 million times 151, so 10 million... maybe 15 billion bacteria. And fungi, 10 million times 56, a lot of fungi.

20:18 IMO 2 is decreasing. And IMO 3... IMO 3 is decreasing. IMO 4, because we mix 1 to 1 ratio with soil. So compared to this one, it's statistically much... 100 times less... Not 100 times, 10 times less. this is about 10 times less too. So the population is decreasing pretty much. So then I could not study yet the diversity of the fungal population between two

21:11 natural farming soil and organic, control soil, and fungal population diversity among the IMOs. Then there was some difference when compared to IMO 1 to IMO 4 when it goes this much. But in this case, for fungi, we do not know about the bacteria, we cannot identify bacteria yet. So fungi, there are a lot of [unclear], sporulating fungi, Aspergillus and maybe Trichoderma, but Aspergillus was dominant. This kind of color, there is Aspergillus, which has spores.

21:59 And then, when it goes to IMO4, which is this population, then there are more Rhizopus fungi. Rhizopus fungi is zygomycete, which is called also dung fungi. And most of the, almost most of the Rhizopus fungi does not cause plant disease at all. But it grows so fast. It is similar to maybe one of the black, black [unclear], usually the decayed [unclear] by this [unclear]. They grow much faster than this one and they have black spores. It produces spores too, but maybe this one has more spores.

22:44 It does not, the height... it does not go faster than this one. This one is far faster than any other fungus. [unclear] grows very slow. They grow slowly. So maybe the component of the fungal population might be changing from IMO 1 to IMO 4. And maybe natural farm soil may have different component of the fungal population compared to traditional compost. So we can recommend it. but we have to start I cannot make any conclusion not yet but we have to study more and more. And this is Trichoderma. This one is also slower than the

23:31 Rhizopus. Anyway, this is a famous one, and many products now available for those [uses]. So I say, what is difference between the compost and organic amendment, or compost and natural farming thing. The source is different. The source comes from natural forest. So there are maybe mostly no pathogens during this treatment. But the organic amendment, they usually [use] crop residue, which is leftover and mixed with all kinds of, if you add the chicken litter and the cow dung, it will be all kinds of bacteria. So there might be difference. And otherwise, later on, organic amendment,

24:13 the biological control agent, maybe... Maybe if you use continuously, better. But those one cost money. But natural farming thing is your own natural, and it comes from natural forest compost. So that maybe makes difference. But we have to figure out that one later on. Hopefully in the future. Okay, this is it.