![\"Nadia_lawton_EM01\"](\"http:\/\/permaculturenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Nadia_lawton_EM01.jpg\")
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Effective Microorganisms (EM) are mixed cultures of beneficial naturally-occurring organisms that can be applied as inoculants to increase the microbial diversity of soil ecosystem. They consist mainly of the photosynthesizing bacteria, lactic acid bacteria, yeasts, actinomycetes and fermenting fungi. These microorganisms are physiologically compatible with one another and can coexist in liquid culture. There is evidence that EM inoculation to the soil can improve the quality of soil, plant growth and yield (Kengo and Hui-lian, 2000).<\/p>\n
BACKGROUND AND CONCEPT OF EFFECTIVE MICROORGANISMS<\/p>\n Healthy soil ecology has the capability of protecting plants against soil associated diseases caused by pathogenic microorganisms and parasites. The soil system offers this protection through a balanced relationship between pathogenic and billions of beneficial microorganisms working together in synergy. The presence of these beneficial microorganisms in any soil system is what precisely distinguishes a\u00a0\u201cliving soil\u201d\u00a0from a\u00a0\u201cdead soil\u201d. They decompose and ferment organic fraction of the soil system converting it into humus containing nutrients while releasing hormones that facilitate plant growth. They are responsible for providing hormones, nutrients and minerals in a useable form to the plants through the root system. In addition, they bring together soil particles in the soil structure enabling it to retain nutrients and moisture (Kengo and Hui-lian, 2000).<\/p>\n Soil ecosystem can therefore be regarded as a\u00a0\u201cliving system\u201d\u00a0costing of diverse groups of microorganisms. For this reason, farmers had long before been using animal manures, composts and\u00a0\u201ccompost tea\u201d\u00a0which is a liquid extract of compost that also contains plant growth compounds and beneficial microorganisms. These mixtures could then be applied to soil and crops to improve the soil quality and help protect crop plants against microbiological infections (Ghosh et al., 2004).<\/p>\n …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WHAT ARE EFFECTIVE MICROORGANISMS? Effective Microorganisms (EM) are mixed cultures of beneficial naturally-occurring organisms that can be applied as inoculants to increase the microbial diversity of soil ecosystem. They consist mainly of the photosynthesizing bacteria, lactic acid bacteria, yeasts, actinomycetes and fermenting fungi. These microorganisms are physiologically compatible with one another and can coexist in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[11843,11844,8748,1091,9354,1536],"class_list":["post-16706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-gideon-towett","tag-microorganisms","tag-permaculture-news","tag-soil","tag-soil-biology","tag-soil-fertility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16707,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16706\/revisions\/16707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photo](\"http:\/\/permaculturenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/IMG_9379-nadia.jpg\")