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LATEST
NEWS
As of June 1, 2005, AgriCultures International has been
changed to ACI Bioremediation.
POWDERY SCAB PATHOGEN EXPERIMENT
Ever hear of spongospora subterranea? Most people know it as "powdery
scab," a troublesome fungal infestation that has been popping
up in potato fields, greatly worrying potato farmers. Indeed,
powdery
scab pathogen is showing up in essentially every potato crop area in the world.
Here are the results of the experiment conducted with AgriCultures...
PHASE I:
GREENHOUSE EXPERIMENT
Under the direction of Dr. Richard Zink, Colorado State University, Cooperative Extension, San Luis Valley
Research Center, a controlled greenhouse experiment with ACI Bioremediation (formerly AgriCultures International)
began to determine AgriCultures' possible effectiveness in eliminating this disease. See newspaper
article about this experiment.
Several months after the
experiment began, Dr. Zink personally inspected all of the containers. He found that
the two containers without the cultures yielded an entire crop of
potatoes diseased with powdery scab Of the six
containers inoculated with the six different strains of AgriCultures, two
containers yielded an entire crop of potatoes that were deemed by Dr.
Zink to be completely free of the powdery scab disease.
PHASE II: IN-FIELD
EXPERIMENT
This experiment was overseen, monitored and the
results evaluated by the Staff members of the Colorado State University
Agricultural Extension Program, located in Center, Colorado. One
particular field in the San Luis Valley had been chosen for this
particular experiment, since it had produced a pathogen affected
diseased potato crop for several seasons prior.
Wet weather late in the growing season seems to trigger
the pathogen spores present, thereby infecting the potato tubers.
Twelve rows within a much larger acreage also planted with
potatoes were used for this experiment, with each row about fourteen
feet in length, and only one row (#12) assigned for the use of
AgriCultures. All rows were planted by Colorado State University,
Agricultural Extension staff, who purposely planted powdery scab
pathogen-diseased seed potatoes into the affected soils, then inoculated
only row #12 with AgriCultures.
At
harvest time, in early September, the row inoculated with AgriCultures
produced a bumper crop of very large healthy potato tubers. Since
other areas of this large acreage field crop were highly variable in the
presence or absence of the diseased tubers, no solid scientific
conclusions could be drawn. One staff
member called it a “mixed bag”, since there were some areas within
this same field where the powdery scab had not been triggered. “Luck
of the Irish” mumbled a CSU staff member, as many shook their
heads in disbelief due to the outcome of the long awaited results of
this experiment.
Officially, the field experiment was considered
“inconclusive” by CSU because of the mixed results in the field
outside of the AgriCultures row.
However, due to the
success of the AgriCultures in-house experiment conducted this past
spring, wherein two of the six chosen strains of AgriCultures produced a completely healthy crop, void of any sign of the disease,
coupled with the results of the in-field crop experiment within the row
#12 inoculated with AgriCultures, it is possible to mark these results
in favor of AgriCultures.
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