Microbes in the phyllosphere produce biosurfactants that improve access for nutrient foliar sprays
From Steve Becker and Dennis Warnecke’s talk at the 2023 Acres U.S.A. Healthy Soil Summit:
We often recommend that growers add a wetting agent — a “sticker” — to the plant in order to get a foliar spray to stick. But the biology actually creates biosurfactants — that is one of the functions it performs to keep itself alive. It wants to create an environment that is conducive for itself to live, so one of the things it does is to create a biosurfactant, which spreads out the water and gives itself a home to live in.
Now, for us, that’s a great thing, because it also keeps everything spread out on the plant. It’s helping make that nutrition available. There’s phosphate-solubilizing bacteria there, but it’s also helping transfer whatever we’re trying to get into the plant, based on the excesses or deficiencies being expressed by the plant. It’s just amazing. We talk so much about the soil environment that we sometimes forget about the organisms on the biosphere of the plant.
