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News From the Field

Fertilizer destroys plant microbiome's ability to protect against disease


July 26, 2018

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Despite enthusiasm for spraying probiotics on crops to ensure healthy microbiomes, little is known about what a healthy above-ground biome, or phyllosphere, looks like. University of California, Berkeley, experiments show that both natural microbiomes and synthetic biomes constructed from normal populations are protective against pathogens, though sometimes low doses work better than high doses. Full Story

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University of California, Berkeley

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