Guano Gold; It's all about the Bacillus

How to grow a stronger, healthier, tastier product by reducing biotic and abiotic stresses with the existing bacillus and silica within Madura Guano Gold products.

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Guano fertilisers, especially those derived from seagull droppings are a rich source of phosphate, calcium, silica, plus trace minerals. However, sometimes it’s the things we can’t see that are the most benefit.

Apart from minerals, both macro and micro guano hosts microscopic life. A bit of history around seagull guano out of South east Asia is that in the late 30’s and up to 1945 the expanding, then obviously retracting Japanese empire, occupied large areas of coastal, islands and agidigbos in South East Asia.

The ships that supplied this expansion among other things took large quantities of guano back to Japan to use as fertiliser on their rice and vegetable crops. This resulted in increased yields but also improved disease and pest control in the crops. Japanese scientists studied this and, a link was discovered between the high silica content and improved growth and yields.

This link to silica had been studied before but the Japanese where among the first to dedicate the study to the benefit of the silica and as a result it was declared a beneficial element. Further research since World War 2 has seen tests conducted on the South East Asian guano by microbiologists. These showed the Guano Gold® product in its mined and bagged state contained good levels of Bacillus in number of different forms.  This light bulb moment has led to further work that indicates that the available silica and the colonising Bacillus both work to reduce both biotic and abiotic stress.  To summaries what bacillus is and what it does I have quote from, A Biological Tool for Crop Improvement through Bio-Molecular Changes in Adverse Environments written in 2017 by Ramalingam Radhakrishnan Abeer Hashem and Elsayed F. Abd_Allah;

“Crop productivity is affected by environmental and genetic factors. Microbes that are beneficial to plants are used to enhance the crop yield and are alternatives to chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Pseudomonas and Bacillus species are the predominant plant growth-promoting bacteria.

The spore-forming ability of Bacillus is distinguished from that of Pseudomonas. Members of this genus also survive for a long time under unfavourable environmental conditions. Bacillus spp. secrete several metabolites that trigger plant growth and prevent pathogen infection. Limited studies have been conducted to understand the physiological changes that occur in crops in response to Bacillus spp. to provide protection against adverse environmental conditions”

The benefits of bacillus like those of silica go beyond just assisting the plant by direct hosting and structural benefits to what they do in the soil chemistry.

Silica reacts with iron, manganese, aluminium and calcium to form compounds that release plant available phosphorus that otherwise would be bound and not available.

Bacillus secretion of phosphatic and organic acids, acidifies the surrounding soil environment to facilitate the conversion of inorganic phosphate into free plant available phosphate.

The available nitrogen in the soil is limited and as a result slows plant growth in natural habitats. Some forms of Bacillus release ammonia, this is a result of the breaking down of organic matter in the soil.

Bacillus is also involved in a process called nitrogenase which is the fixing of nitrogen in the soil air into plant available nitrogen.

The colonizing Bacillus that occur naturally on the Guano Gold® product produces changes in the soil that give benefits above its straight analysis.

This is one reason anecdotal feedback from farmers who have used the product tend to talk about benefits that are hard to just contribute to phosphorus or calcium.

Article 3 of 12 Written by;

Robert Drewitt, BcSc(Ag) | Agronomist
Agronomy Services Australasia Pty Ltd