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Darklight

Trichoderma LC for fertiliser- teks known?

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Am a huge fan of commercial Trichoderma spp blends as a liquid fertiliser addition to my home garden.

 

The commercial products are usually sold as dry powders- spore mixes treated for storage.

 

I have run right out of these and need some soon. I have Trichoderma spp cultures in my library, and I can easily do liquid cultures based on my standard fertiliser blend.

 

Would the shock of throwing a growing but otherwise sterile culture, even at log phase, into the wild to compete with other organisms potentially any advantage?

 

What sort of optical density of the LC Trichoderma would I need as a fertiliser base, to add as 10x, 100x or 1000x. Can I wing it or do I need to switch the spectrophotometer on?

 

Anyone had any experience trying this?

Edited by Darklight

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I've had no such experience so I can not offer any advice ,

but I would love to know what the addition of trich to fertiliser and your garden in turn is good for ie perceived benefits . Just interested as I've never heard of such a thing , all though my knowledge runs thin but I'm learning or attempting to anyway 

 

Edited by fozzking
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Anyone?

 

Orbital shaker is on, I can easily run a scale-up on what I have, maybe make 100ml using malt extract + some sterile liquid fert components so it's not as much of a shock to the culture when I dilute it with non-sterile liquid nutes to spray

 

Or does Trich need to be added as encapsulated spores ( ie commercial preparation ) directly into liquid nutes cos it only works as a foliar spray that way- throwing log phase sterile cultures into a non-sterile mix could potentially shock em to death?

 

I can't even imagine an experiment around this which would be facile and robust

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On 12/5/2016 at 0:45 AM, Ex-Cess'es said:

I've had no such experience so I can not offer any advice ,

but I would love to know what the addition of trich to fertiliser and your garden in turn is good for ie perceived benefits . Just interested as I've never heard of such a thing , all though my knowledge runs thin but I'm learning or attempting to anyway 

 

 

Trich and other microfungal/ bacterial components have, for me, increased yield and decreased disease in a few species.

 

Also used them for increasing strike rate with unknown success- I don't have a controlled climate seedling house so am at the mercy of the elements which tend to be a bigger factor overall

 

I've used a few commercial Trich blends with great success but it's getting exxy. There have been a range of other components from Azotobacter to fucked-if-I-can-remember-I-lost-the-labels. Trich is by far my favourite ingredient and has been the constant.

 

Bunch of mechanisms, many of which I don't understand.

 

A couple which stand out in my specific experience are:

  • I have a species with a strong tendency to die of fungal disease when stressed. When I foliar fertilise regularly with a Trich blend, the mortality rate for this species drops to almost 0%. Just an hypothesis, but I'm figuring the parts of the plant prone to environmental fungal infection are asymtomatic if infected with Trichoderma.
  • The effect wears off if I fail to fertilise for a month or so- it's not a one-off treatment, there are competitor organisms ( I've got a locally isolated slime mould in-vitro which has the most fascinating battles with Trichoderma- when it's cool the Trich takes over the substrate and the slime mould retreats or is eaten- when it warms up the Trich is eaten and the slime mould grows super rapidly- fascinating to watch, happens over hours ). My tentative conclusion is the Trich in the soil succumbs to the slime mould and similar at low temps, allowing the local bloody pestilence to attack my plants if overwhelming amounts of Trich isn't re-introduced regularly
  • Trich apparently evokes a mild stress response in plants, just enough to make them grow in response. No references, just something I've read

Then there's the whole microfungi nutrient breakdown, saving plant roots some work in accessing them

 

I would totally recommend trying this on at least some of your species- just a sample, no more than 30% of your stock on any species so you have some left if they don't like it

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Hi Darklight, interesting stuff, please let us know how you go. I use Psudomonas for similar results. I haven't used Trichoderma before but, being a fungus, your plan on upscaling in a sterile liquid sounds like the right way to go. I assume the malt is because you plan on giving the trich a chance to colonise before spraying?

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Darklight said:

I can't even imagine an experiment around this which would be facile and robust

One possable, simple experiment could be cups of nutrient solution in a controled enviroment, with the only variable between cups being the concentration and preperation of the trichoderma. Float a single Lemna minor in each cup and count how much it multaplies over a week or 2. This will give you a baseline on if Trichs effect plant growth in isolation. More important will be how it reacts with other organisms in your garden. for this you could culture several dishes of your local slime mold and see what it takes to kill it. Maybe you need to add another strain that can handle the cold so you don't need to keep reaplying?

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5 hours ago, Crop said:

 I use Psudomonas for similar results.

 

Nice- must try that sometime

 

5 hours ago, Crop said:

I haven't used Trichoderma before but, being a fungus, your plan on upscaling in a sterile liquid sounds like the right way to go. I assume the malt is because you plan on giving the trich a chance to colonise before spraying?

 

I'm prolly not thinking this through properly, but I figure the commercial products w encapsulation directly penetrate leaf surface- once sprayed on they germinate. I have no idea if this is accurate.

 

Spraying live unprotected log phase colonies onto plants even in low light might not be as effective as the light shock, sudden exposure to air etc. could kill them

 

Might work straight into soil tho. Hmmmm...

 

 

4 hours ago, Crop said:

One possable, simple experiment could be cups of nutrient solution in a controled enviroment, with the only variable between cups being the concentration and preperation of the trichoderma. Float a single Lemna minor in each cup and count how much it multaplies over a week or 2. This will give you a baseline on if Trichs effect plant growth in isolation. More important will be how it reacts with other organisms in your garden. for this you could culture several dishes of your local slime mold and see what it takes to kill it. Maybe you need to add another strain that can handle the cold so you don't need to keep reaplying?

 

Duckweed... nice idea, thank you! That way I can avoid all those tedious petri dishes and centrifuging and resuspension and optical density measurements and just go straight to the guts of it- ie does it give visible growth results

 

I don't mind re-application as that way I can be certain that precious plants will be OK, especially if I can make an ongoing supply for practically nothing. So competitor organisms aren't an issue

 

Positive control will be commercial blend treatment. Negative controls will be untreated Duckweed, and the fert blend minus the Trichoderma. Space limitations mean the number of repeats per variable will be limited to 2-3 and I don't want to be running more than 10-15 duckweed containers for more than 2 months.

 

Dammit I'll need to randomise their placement to make sure that light differences aren't fudging results :/

 

Hmmm, won't have time to do this before EGA.

 

Still open to other improvements or teks while we're thinking about it

 

Thanks heaps Crop!

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Experiment abandoned.

 

I can get a kilo of Trich ferts for about $60, and if I aliquot it under sterile conditions that'll last for 2-3 years

 

I don't need the bacto elements in the commercial blends, previous experiences with different commercial fungal/bacto blends have shown some deleterious consequences under some weather conditions with my target species ( long story snipped ).

 

Have worked successfully with Trich nutes in these species previously- a fungal blend is overall better but I never did comparisons at a level to determine which one- I just know that without the Trich added to ferts the results were much poorer and I have the dead plants to prove it. The Trich is the constant

 

Is gunna be quicker to get $60 together than it is to work out whether the home Trich LC mix is set back/ viable due to shock when diltued into non-sterile working strength solution, and whether that solution is producing comparable outcomes wrt plant growth

 

Plus I'd need to buy the Trich nutes anyhow to run as a positive control

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