Two relatively new understandings of how plants and microbes work together — rhizophagy and exclusion-zone water — help explain why regenerative practices work better in some soils than on others
The rhizophagy cycle presents a different model of plant nutrition than we have previously understood. It asserts that plants should absorb nutrients through biological systems.
My understanding of how the rhizophagy cycle works is different today than it was even a year ago.
Understanding Rhizophagy
To begin to understand the rhizophagy cycle, imagine a plant root tip that is growing through the soil. At the tip of the plant there is a zone that is very porous, and this porous tip will move through the soil very quickly when the soil has stable consistency. It can extend two inches per hour, as long as the soil pressure and soil consistency is the same. Whenever that growing root tip encounters a layer of compaction, though, it stops or slows down, and then it continues forward. If it experiences a decrease in compaction, it stops or slows down, and then it starts moving forward again. So, if you have lots of variations in soil density, root growth is not all that rapid. Some fascinating research by a USDA researcher in Arizona about 20 years ago found that a corn plant could completely fill a vessel six feet in diameter, six feet deep, in 72 hours — as long as the soil density was exactly the same.
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