 I want to honor the reason that we are here, which is simultaneously reporting on this research extension project, which is supported by SARE, but also address questions that related to that project, but more generally to the use of microbial bio-stimulants. Can we take maybe two or three questions that you came into the room with about these products before we launch into the summary of the project? Or should we just get into the project and let the chips fall? So the question is, and that'll get at the heart of the matter, which is a great lead-in, that was not a plant question. Everyone has heard the statement, you know, more microbes than a thimble full of soil than there are people on the earth, right? So what business do we have thinking that this small amount of pixie dust or whatever it is that we would have in a package or as manufactured from a, derived from a compost tea, what business do we have thinking that the small number of microbes are going to be, and put into the soil at that time, are going to make any difference? I mean, what biological basis would we have for making that statement? Or should we be worried that we're actually putting, oftentimes, bacteria, sometimes fungi, sometimes both? Do we have to worry about any of these? Can good microbes go bad, you know? To answer the first question, what business do we have thinking? I've given a lot of talks on this particular topic about seven in the last three months in different places, six or so different states, writing a lot about it, talking to a lot of people about it. The answer is maybe. Okay? The answer is that it depends. The answer is that actually, because we know we take an antibiotic or we use microbes in different ways, that small amounts can matter, right? Even though the background population is large and diverse. Can good microbes go bad? I don't know if there's any evidence on that specifically. And most of the time, the microbes that we are applying as an inoculant, we're actually taken from soils to begin with, or plants, naturally curing communities. So they are ones that survive culture, can be mass produced, packaged, formulated, applied, and we hope produce a desirable outcome. Two great questions, yeah. Paraphrasing, when, under what conditions do they work? You know, if this continues, we won't need a presentation. This is great. This is absolutely great. No, every one of these topics is addressed at some point, and I'm half tempted to just let the conversation go. When do they work? That's one of the largest running debates. Is it in soils that are a bit compromised, if you will, lower health, if you will, or soils that are already operating at a really high productivity? You'll hear two narratives. You'll hear them both. You'll hear they tend to be more useful, offer greater return on investment when the soils are not as healthy as they could be, for example. But there's another, and that narrative, by the way, appears to be better supported by research-based data. The other narrative is, no, they can make an already really well-functioning system superior. The narrative is out there. It is shared by people who know quite a bit, whom I respect a lot. And I would say that both can be true. It's not, we don't have to have dualistic, you know, exclusive thinking here where we say it's got to be this or that. It could be both. But the data are stronger for the former, where it's the unhealthy patient, so to speak, that would benefit most from the inoculation. So I began my journey here actually Thursday night in Mansfield during that tempest of a storm. I went all the way up to Napoleon, Ohio, and then I came down here for another talk. These four questions have just made the journey really worthwhile. That's another often-asked question. It's one that I have a lot of passion around, because ultimately, as you see on the yellow sheets and maybe the white sheets that are floating around, is that we pay a lot of, in my group, we pay a lot of attention to quality and particularly nutritional value and sensory properties, anything that would influence somebody's desire to buy the product, eat the product, and then want to do that again. I'd say the results are mixed. There are definitely communities of people that swear by the ability of these products to alter quality, but I'm not so sure if the data are, from my standpoint, all that convincing. And we just need to look at it more thoroughly. So another great question. So one more. Is there any research on forage production using microbes? So all the examples I'm going to show this morning, and this project is built around vegetable production, but as often true, like we have here today, we have people interested in everything from soup to nuts, animals and plants and different kinds of plants and animals. I think the principles that I'm going to mention will apply to agronomic systems forage and certainly to vegetables. The quick answer is yes. I mean, there seems to be an emerging, small but emerging literature on that. Okay. So we're going to stay in somewhere to be out of the way. We more or less accept that microbes most of the time are good, that the healthy and diverse soil microbial communities are what we're after, so on and so forth, and that these microbial communities are often underutilized. This idea goes way, way back. So-called plant growth promoting rhizobacteria have been commercialized for nearly, well since 1995, well over 100 years. Rhizobular inoculants were the first to be commercial, okay? But here's the problem. The problem is that we have a lot of enthusiasm over the potential benefits of inoculation. I mean, just this pent-up energy here and already here. But then there's a grand canyon between that enthusiasm and the resources to guide people in the use of the inoculants. There's a huge chasm there. So this is what the project attempts to address. And this is how I will explain what we're going about it. So unlike other inputs, the best evidence for the efficacy of these products is not in the public domain. You will unlikely find it on Google Scholar. You're unlikely to find it in other areas that you may look for quality information, information you can rely on. It's just not out there. You have to dig and dig and dig. I often illustrate it this way. This picture was actually taken to Michigan, okay? A number of scientific journal articles and company reports, you know, the power that you see evident in that picture versus this little puddle of water. That's what we have by comparison for the resources that you could use as growers to guide your use of microbial inoculants. So why is that? Well, first off, there are a lot of them. We have counted, as of November 2017, 235 of these products that are just OMRI listed. These are not the ones that are not OMRI listed, okay? Although all of these, thanks in part to Sarah's support, all of these information, all of these are at a web-based portal. You can go there, it's free, just click and sort and search. And you can look at products that may interest you and their composition is listed as well. So you've got a lot of these products. That's a 36% increase in two and a half years. I mean, think about other items you use on the farm and ask yourself if any of the options for those particular products have increased in number by 36% in two and a half years. The answer is likely to be no. So there's a proliferation of product. Now that's not a problem in and of itself, okay? Many is not the problem. The problem is, we're unclear on how to select them, how to use them and how to evaluate their efficacy. So it's no problem to have many, it's just that we don't have a mechanism yet for selecting, using and evaluating them. So that's what we're trying to drive toward in this project, particularly in providing information of the so-called third party type with, in this case, as you might know, it's like there's no skin in the game. I and other university folks and others involved in the project, we have no vested interest in the success of the product. So anything that we may say about it is just based on the numbers that we have in front of us, okay? So we're looking at, look, we are in the process of developing this third party information, this farm or friendly info, and that's important because these products may work on only certain crops or be more effective on certain crops. There's what we call host specificity involved. All microbes do not form equally productive relationships with all crops. And vice versa, an individual crop will not form a particular association with all microbes. And the classic example of this is mycorrhizae and brassica crops. There's just no love there, okay? They don't work together. So don't bother inoculating your brassica crops with mycorrhizae. It just won't work, okay? So as far as the genera and these are the scientific names for which we have or for which there is the best data, the most reliable data, the most abundant data on their efficacy, it's definitely rhizobia on the legumes, of course, and mycorrhizae, except for on the brassica. That we've kind of categorically indicated it doesn't work. So as far as the spectrum of the strength of evidence regarding the effectiveness, it's really strong for rhizobia and mycorrhizae. And I think I jumped ahead of here. So it's best for those, okay? We'll come back to some that are not yet. Currently, the sector is basically minimally regulated, poorly regulated, inconsistently regulated. So we describe this as being the wild west of inputs out there, okay? And the system for testing them is somewhat weak. We often have incomplete or vague labels. States vary in the assertiveness, if you will, the consistency with which they regulate the labeling. Ohio, for example, is somewhat notoriously lax in its application of label restrictions and so forth. So we find products on the market that literally don't specify what the product contains, but we have Bukku number of growers using them anyway. And I said, that's kind of funny because I talk with growers all the time and they're like adamant that they know exactly what's in the product. But when it comes to microbes, they're special. I don't need to know. It's microbes, it's good, right? Seriously? Anyway, incomplete labels. It's important to recognize that the products differ in their composition, as you know if you've been looking at this carefully. You've got mixed inoculants, so-called mixed inoculants with multiple species, multiple genera, others that bring in the so-called super team, superhero of genera, and they put the three in the jug that are just like renowned. So there's different philosophies there by company. I want Wonder Woman, or Spider-Man, or Superman. Or I want the whole Avenger team because one of them is going to work. That's the philosophy. Yeah, so we have this evidence. But we have somewhat strong but weaker evidence for these five, actually these four genera, in terms of their efficacy, OK? And for many others, we have very little evidence. I'm not saying it won't work. It's just that the evidence for their efficacy is lower, is weaker. So it also means, because there are so many, that to advise people, or to use them properly, have to kind of become proficient at a new language, the microbiology line, the language of microbiology. And I keep saying to manufacturers, look, people should not have to become trained microbiologists to make good use of these products, OK? Just like one should not have to be an engineer to work with a really good weed control implement. Little farmer knowledge goes a long way. But one should not have to have the capacity, if you will, of a design engineer to be able to work with a weed control implement. It's the same way with a microbial biostimulant. So in that case, though, a little bit will help you. If you do become proficient in the naming of organisms and what they do and how they may associate with plants, it will be very, very helpful. Also, their modes of action are subtle. They are not biocontrol agents. So let's start with that distinction. They are not agents that are going to kill or noticeably interrupt a life cycle, kill an organism, or noticeably interrupt its life cycle, prevent it from flourishing. It's not a put it on today and see the effect later on this afternoon or tomorrow morning kind of scenario. The effects are more subtle. So they can be more difficult to determine the extent to which they're working. In widespread trialing, the results are case-specific. So the first question out of the gate was under what conditions? And then we followed that up. Unconditions in the yield increases are really about 5%. So let me start with a tiny bit of stats. And this is going to last maybe a minute or two, and then we can move forward. This is what we call a piano key representation of company trial reports. Forget that the number down here is unimportant. It's just that a company has done 400 trials with a product. By trial, they put it out on 400 different places and they've recorded the percent yield of the increase over the control, much like the selectivity quotient that was described just a few minutes ago. So they inoculate a crop and they record the yield of the inoculated portion and the uninoculated portion, and then they calculate that and they represent it here. And they get this piano, what they call a piano key thing, it's like spread out because some of them go from 30% to minus 5%. And then you come along as a grower and you say, what's the average response? They say, well, it's about 6%. It's case-specific, but guess what? Most growers experience the average about 15% of the time. 85% of the time you're experiencing something other than the average. So the real question to ask is what is the most frequently occurring response? That's what? The mode. The median is the one in the middle, the average is the average. The average is a statistical phenomenon that you are unlikely to see very often. And so what you're really curious about when you're discussing an inoculate with a manufacturer is number one, what's this graph look like? You know, what shape does it have? Is it straight across the board? I mean, just where do the numbers lie? Don't tell me the average. You know, I'd like to see the distribution and I would like to see, understand the mode, okay? So that also feeds into, okay, okay, now I have a potentially useful material here. What are the application Rs? You know, the threshold for acceptability and how are you going to evaluate it? The Rs are the right timing, placement, rate, and substance. Those are, that is irrespective of organic or conventional. You're going to use something. You're going to under, if you're going to apply something, you're going to want to add, you're going to ask, when do I put it on? How much of it do I put on? Where do I put it on? And what do I put on? So it's the same questions apply to these microbial knockouts and we are just now scratching the surface in a systematic way to develop that information. What are the thresholds for acceptability? Is it, well, I put it on and it didn't do any harm. Okay, well, that's like a low bar. Maybe it helped a little. Okay, how often does it help? And what we've come to understand is that most people use them as insurance policies. Their philosophy is they're likely to have no harm. They may actually do some good. The cost of application is I can accept it. What the heck? That's an insurance policy. But when they start scratching deeper, they say, wow, gosh, I'm putting on $100 an acre's worth of this stuff. Is it actually working for me? Do you need a positive return on investment most of the time? Do you need statistical significance? Frequently, we don't have it. And by statistical significance, the point you had a researchers in a group say, well, the whiskers don't overlap and all that. Well, that's an expression of variability, right? So if there is no statistical significance that's not present, it typically means there was a lot of variability in your data and that goes back to that P&O key diagram, okay? How to evaluate the efficacy? There's a lot of perspectives to learn from here. We need criteria, we need methods, we need resources to do that. And Sarah has been tremendously helpful with that. So we put all these positive and negative views together. Some are, there's this one, right? But there's no doubt that there's a lot of money being made on these products. This is, you're talking about the number of people that use them and the value of the industry that's projected to reach $250 million. That's a lot of little applications going along the way. So how do we help people benefit more reliably and convincingly when using these products? That's where Sarah's come in. And without that support, we definitely would not be in the position where we are. We've married that up with other support from our respective institutions and teams to multiply the effort. We've also been very fortunate to work very closely with these four companies. I'm not stumping for them. I'm simply saying that when this project was discussed and in the planning phase, and we were talking with so many people about what we should do and how and for whom and so forth. That these four companies emerged as real viable partners because they understand the effort and they want the effort, okay? I'm hopeful and there are 80 some companies in this arena. I'm hopeful that more of those will emerge, but these four step forward right away, okay? And these are some of the great people I get a chance to work with. Bonnie at the University of Tennessee, Carol with OFA, Subbu and Chris with OSU as well. And two former employees of mine who really helped to get the project rolling. But Julie's now at OFA and Jung is now with UC Davis. So we now have Nicole as our program associate and Stephanie Short as our program assistant and both of them are instrumental in making things happen on a day to day basis. So our work is integrated. We have equal parts extension and applied research. As examples, we last year from 2015 to 2017, but we had on-farm evaluations in seven states on seven different crops involving 10 different products and eight different companies throughout the North Central region and even outside of it. A lot of times that research involves flags. So if you're going to do field research, you're going to have flags. So we like to go out and populate people's fields with flags. Usually there's a brown gooey mixture somewhere along the way that gets mixed up and then applied to the crop. It's either a drench or through the drip line. And we're doing this in open fields or high tunnels. Growers are collecting data. We encourage them to do that. We give them guidance on how to do that. We can't, of course, force them to do that, but we really emphasize the need to write down what happened to measure it somehow. Here they're measuring lettuce. We're recruiting growers for this year. So this postcard was just mailed out throughout the entire OFA footprint anyway. And we're already receiving quite a few contacts from growers who are interested in becoming a member of the testing team, so to speak. And please contact me or Nicole or Stephanie if you're interested as well. So we examine, we include studies of product timing and rate. We are looking at yield and quality, and the question that was asked earlier. Quality being variously defined, but certainly we look at all the attributes that, as many attributes as we can that would influence a buyer's ability to sell the product. We also try to understand how the products work, and this is just an example of spinach, petyl nitrate concentrations being measured. Carrot internal, external color. So if it changes the color, it may be changing the pigment level that may have implications in nutritional value or taste, texture, or aroma, for example. So we're trying to optimize, help optimize the product's use and discuss, or at least get information on the interactions. Because often people say like, hey, I just applied a fungicide. Did that kill my inoculant? I said, I wish I could tell you that for sure. Well, was it a bacterial inoculant? Yeah, well, you're possibly safe, if it was a fungicide. But if it's a general biocide, yeah, actually you may have just killed your inoculant, okay? So we need to understand these interactions because as we don't need a lecture on that, everyone understands how the system is holistic and all the pieces have to fit together, right? Okay, so our extension is ongoing, began immediately, day one, but it's been ongoing. We have this, what we call a bugs in a jug webpage. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you can go to that webpage. You can track what we're doing, comment on it, and maybe pick up some useful information along the way. We have a second website called the Organic Farming Research Network. This is like the world's longest URL. We're trying to shorten it. But yeah, so we put this there because it's kind of our blog-ish version of the project where we can update very, very easily, okay? And as I mentioned this portal, we had conference calls last year. Three of them, about this time last year, we have three more coming. The conference calls were really cool. I had in my mind's eye, I had like a radio program. All about microbial bestows, doesn't that just sound like something you'd like to spend an hour and a half on, right? But 51 people did from all these states and from different walks of life. And from different levels of experience with the products. Really enthusiastic group. And so they just call in and we have the call staffed with what we call resource people, people dedicated to being on the call. And we just have a moderated conversation about the topic of the day. And we recorded them and so now you can listen to them, okay? So if you have a long drive to make and unlimited data plan, check it out, tune in, okay? You can hear about the topics of those days. And we have three more coming March, April and May. So that announcement will be coming out soon, officially, but all things are coming into place really nicely. We have a really top flight group of resource people this time around. And the recruitment of resource people went so smooth this year, it's just really nice, because we had last year to reference, okay? And that's just cool to see. So this is the emerging list. Some of these names you may know, some you may not. But if you scan them, and it's not even a complete list, because some committed yesterday, what you see are university people, manufacturers, supplier folks, and private and public sector consultants, okay? With some familiarity with these products. And the idea is to get them all in the same place at the same time, talking about the same thing. And disagreement is okay, okay? Growers will sort it out. If they're given some help, they'll sort it out. But disagreement is okay. There's no company line being touted here. So last year, this is the distribution of folks that were, sorry, this is about the listserv. We now have a listserv. I mentioned the number of people on the calls last year. But the listserv we've also launched. And I know that people have love-hate relationships with listservs. And it was mentioned earlier, they're either really active or not so active. This one I'd say is moderately active, okay? It's still new. But it grows in membership pretty consistently. Now we're up to 168 in less than a year. And it's got a pretty wide membership in terms of their walks of life. And again, listservs, if you know them and you work with them using proper etiquette, one was mentioned earlier about with the chicken project, fascinating stuff. They can be super helpful, can be really helpful for people to reach others immediately by email who have then the opportunity to comment on something. So we've got a bunch of presentations. I mentioned this only because for those of us in the room right here, right now, right today, representing wherever you are, you may know already, but I'll just leave no doubt. This is a topic of national interest at some level. That's just this sense that I'm getting that no matter where one goes, just like mechanical weak control and the other topics that we're hearing about. Thankfully, supported by SAIR, I mean, we have some high priority items here. Field days last year, general articles, it's collaborative. We try to use this approach with our collaboration. This is the outcome that we want, both people being fed well. Scaled and calibrated, local activity, repeated across the region. So this is where we were last year. That list is growing. We have six committed, I believe six committed already in basically the same states and more. We'd like to expand it and emphasize that we work outdoors and in high tunnels. And of course we're running our own evaluations at OARDC as well along with the growers. So I mentioned this card if you're interested and you didn't receive a card all you have to do is contact me. And so I'd say in summary, the inputs have a lot of potential and clearly they're popular. All we have to do is look at sales data. We don't need growers to say, we have sales data. We have other information indicate that they're popular. Those are two great assets. The concern that I have and others have, I mean, it's a working concern. It's not a negative concern. It's just that to actually strengthen their position in your toolbox, we need a lot more patience and information. But what we need most of is information, okay? So how do we capitalize on the obvious enthusiasm around the product, around the idea of using microbial inoculants? Take advantage of these crop microbe interactions. How do we do all that offering a good economic return on investment? So if there is time for questions, I'll be glad to take them. Question is, soil testing is routine and encouraged. Particularly of the nutrients. Is anyone developing a test for the microbial populations in the same soils? I think that's one of the, yes. I don't know if any have really hit, to my knowledge, have really hit the market, so to speak, for widespread use. The group at Ontario has, I think, has something going on through the University of Guelph, has something going on. I think everyone should pay very close attention to it. It's very much along those lines. A quick, inexpensive, reliable assessment of soil microbial communities. I think that, I mean, the term Holy Grail was used earlier for in-row, we control. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We gotta keep that exclusive. So if there would be a second Holy Grail, it would be a test for soil microbial communities like you're talking about. Exactly. So do the microbes that we apply through the inoculants persist? Do they remain in the soil? Do we have to keep using them? Another one of the most commonly asked questions, and I think the answer is, as you might know, there are ways of doing it, but the problem is the specificity. You can get total DNA, you can get total this, you can run various tests, but to my knowledge, there's no way to test for that exact organism without spending a huge amount of money. Now, I will say that one of the grower cooperators who contacted us just a few days ago says I've been using product X for 10 years on my farm here in Indiana, and I don't think it's working for me anymore. I don't think I'm getting the benefit from it anymore. I said, well, it's pretty interesting, you know, interesting observation. So now the test will be the product he's been using for 10 years alongside a product that he's new to him. So I think there's something to that, very much something to that question.