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View Full Version : Plants Eat Bacteria and Pee



urbanfarmer
04-21-2011, 02:42 PM
Apparently, plants take bacteria in through their roots and digest them for the nutrients. One study I read showed that it would eat e.coli bacteria. That explains a lot in aquaponics and the benefits of these so called worm or compost teas!

I also saw another study that showed plants will uptake urea. We knew that plants would take in ammonia directly and of course nitrate, but urea too? That's amazing!

Thoughts? If you guys don't start posting more I am going to stop posting all this weird stuff I find!!! :twisted:

cedarswamp
04-21-2011, 02:51 PM
I knew about the urea as a large part of the nitrogen in Miracle Grow is urea.

badflash
04-21-2011, 02:53 PM
Sounds right, but not impervious. I wonder about bacteria splashed on the leaves. There was that food poisoning incident caused by wild pigs that contaminated a bunch of greens a few years ago.

urbanfarmer
04-21-2011, 04:48 PM
Well, the held belief (at least what I learned from the hydroponic community years ago) was that urea was broken down to nitrate and in nearly sterile hydroponic systems it was bad to use urea or ammonia based fertilizers because nothing would break them down. However, now we know that plants take these in directly!

I don't think they leaves do either badflash. :cry:

cedarswamp
04-21-2011, 06:31 PM
I'm sorry I misinterpreted what you were saying. It's been my understanding that only NH4 and NO3 were directly usable by plants and that NH3 and urea must first convert to NH4 to be utilized.

rfeiller
04-21-2011, 09:33 PM
if leaves can take up nutrients with foliage feeding, why not virus or bacteria?
urea is a cheap source of nitrogen, many fertilizers are urea based.

don't stop posting the "weird" stuff, accepted or not it certainly is food for thought and opens other pathways. apprediate it

urbanfarmer
04-21-2011, 10:26 PM
I'm sorry I misinterpreted what you were saying. It's been my understanding that only NH4 and NO3 were directly usable by plants and that NH3 and urea must first convert to NH4 to be utilized.
Ah, then my post does strike you as unusual. Yes, the plants absorb urea directly. Plants also absorb ammonium directly, and I believe it doesn't really matter if it's ammonia or it's ionized form ammonium. I think for the plant it depends on the pH and some other factors. Definitely something I need to read up on!


if leaves can take up nutrients with foliage feeding, why not virus or bacteria?
urea is a cheap source of nitrogen, many fertilizers are urea based.

don't stop posting the "weird" stuff, accepted or not it certainly is food for thought and opens other pathways. apprediate it

Hm... Apparently, the pathogens do enter via the stomata (this is where foilar feeding/spraying takes place that's why you spray the UNDER side of the leaf not the top), but I have neither heard of or read any research that suggests the plant consume bacteria that enter through the stoma. I think you may have found a new research paper that needs publishing! If I see anything, I will share.

rfeiller
04-21-2011, 10:46 PM
damn, i'm going to have to crack some old brain cells and do some research, that's gonna be painful! :lol:

cedarswamp
04-22-2011, 03:00 AM
I have a paper in my bookmarks somewhere, I believe from the University of Kentucky that explains the different forms of nitrogen and how they are used by plants. Maybe it's outdated but I'll see if I can find it tonight.

cedarswamp
04-22-2011, 11:06 AM
Once again I was wrong, it was the University of Nebraska not Kentucky.. :lol:

http://lancaster.unl.edu/ag/factsheets/288.pdf

urbanfarmer
04-22-2011, 01:56 PM
Stuff like this doesn't really get outdated. The science we usually discuss on these forums are so basic and rudimentary that 40 to 50 year old studies often have more than enough information for us to gain understanding of aquaponic systems. Take for example when I was trying to analyze human urine as a source of fertilizer. All the newer studies were talking about such fine details of the urine or were looking at specific aspects that I couldn't get what I wanted. Basically, all the newer studies took for granted what I was trying to learn for the first time. I ended up finding a 30-40 year old paper published by NASA on human urine. The chemistry used in the paper was nearly identical to what I learned in my Chemistry classes (a few numbers or assumptions were off which were revised by newer technology and such), but I would say 98% of it was right on and perfectly useful to me... anyway, rambling, but thanks for sharing, good find! A lot of the information out there is put out by the Extension :-) and that's our job, to help bring information in a useful manner to the general public... who knows you might find stuff I publish through my extension on the web in the next few years (which I am definitely trying to pilot a program at our county office so that the master gardeners know what aquaponics is and how to teach people about it when they need help) :mrgreen:

urbanfarmer
04-22-2011, 03:02 PM
I forgot to post the research for this (probably because I was annoyed I have to pay for the full paper, but here is the "free" abstract). I could copy/paste the whole thing, but the rest isn't relevant to our discussion. It's also okay to post the abstract here due to fair use copyright law; so, no worries JCO! :lol:

Urea is a plant metabolite derived either from root uptake or from catabolism of arginine by arginase. In agriculture, urea is intensively used as a nitrogen fertilizer. Urea nitrogen enters the plant either directly, or in the form of ammonium or nitrate after urea degradation by soil microbes... READ MORE... (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21421389)