Probiotics for plants? Paul Zorner, CEO of Locus Agricultural Solutions in San Diego, explains how bacteria and fungi help plants grow faster and pull more carbon dioxide out of the air. Even better, agricultural companies that use probiotics see a 200% return on investment in crop yields and use fewer fertilizers. Paul grew up on a farm and “hated it” but later began to see the beauty in the natural world.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade and podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:38

Probiotics for plants, they make plants healthier, more productive, and better able to take carbon out of the atmosphere. I'm your host Richard Miles today on Radio Cade . My guest is Paul Zorner, CEO of Locus Agricultural Solutions based in San Diego. Welcome to Radio Cade, Paul.

Paul Zorner: 0:54

Thank you, Richard. It's a pleasure.

Richard Miles: 0:55

So Paul, before we talk about plants, let's talk about probiotics. I think most people have heard of them and know in a vague way that they are somehow good for us, but explain what probiotics actually are and what their function is.

Paul Zorner: 1:09

Great . Well , I , most people have seen lots of information on probiotics for humans. They occupy our intestines and they regulate all kinds of things from our immune health to our nutrient status, to even our mood and plants are no different. But in this case, probiotics for plants are our live organisms, bacteria and fungi that live in the roots of plants and they perform the same function for that plant, that microbes in our intestines serve for us. They make the plant's immune system better. They help it take up nutrients from the soil and they allow it to grow faster, better produce more food. And in this particular case to turn the plant into an increased carbon pump, a stronger carbon pump in terms of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turning it into sugars that ultimately get turned into carbon down in the soil, which is a wonderful thing, especially in this day and age where we're so worried about global warming.

Richard Miles: 2:00

So Paul, is there a way to precisely measure the increase in all these good things like the increase in the plan , how the productivity and the ability to take carbon out of the air ? I imagine that you can do a before and after without probiotics and nose width. Is it that refined?

Paul Zorner: 2:15

Absolutely . And generally when we put trials out, we focus on, on agronomic performance owners. We work with growers and we work in Florida with , with citrus growers, for example, and we'll generally put this out to their micro sprinklers and drip irrigation systems to get it out of the root. Then we compare a treatment with our probiotic against what we call grower practice, whatever the grower is doing. We bolted onto that and we take a look at the increased growth of the plant, more leads, greener leads. And then ultimately what's important is the yield of the, of the citrus. None of the disease, getting more cases of citrus growers is more pound solid, more fruits and more sugar and things that are valuable to h