on EnviroMax™
The following information is a documented series of testing results on EnviroMax.
EnviroMax appears to react through the medium of soil water and unless the soil is parched, there is sufficient moisture present for effective incorporation. Often it is advantageous to use additional moisture provided by rainfall, or artificially through a spraying or irrigation procedure. EnviroMax will diffuse into the soil through the aid of the soil moisture and is aided by the normal cycles of wetting and drying and freezing and thawing.
EnviroMax has a molecular weight greater than 10,000 and contains one of the following molecular groupings:
EnviroMax has been particularly useful in treating fields under cultivation in which plants are growing, newly transplanted, or freshly seeded soils. By treating the areas immediately around the growing plants or planted seeds, effective aggregation of these critical areas can be accomplished without using EnviroMax on the non-productive areas. EnviroMax will effectively stabilize the unstable aggregates by their addition with no other steps required.
The availability of oxygen to plant roots in soil in the presence of various amounts of water is conveniently measured by the technique of Webley, Quastel et al., described in detail in the J. Agr. Sci. 37, 257, (1947). In this procedure a microorganism such as yeast is substituted for plant roots and the rate of utilization of oxygen by the yeast suspended in a glucose solution is measured in the Warburg apparatus by a manometric method. The carbon dioxide evolved in the metabolic process is absorbed by potassium hydroxide in a center well so that the change in gas volume is caused by the utilization of oxygen by the yeast and the soil micro-organisms.
Soils with good tilth retain their porous crumb structure in the presence of large amounts of water. The yeast suspension in water is therefor spread over a large surface and oxygen can diffuse through the relatively thin films of water. This produces high oxygen uptake by the yeast.
Soils with poor structure break down to a mud as the amount of water is increased and much less oxygen diffuses through these thick water films. Thus, the oxygen uptake by yeast in this type soil is much lower. Using this technique, the effect of added materials on soil structure can be quantified by measuring the rate of respiration of yeast in contact with soil crumbs under controlled conditions. The rate of respiration is expressed as the aeration factor (A.F.).
© JMH/RSH1998