CONTENTS
Please
note, this "book" has been translated into English from its Russian
form. Any small grammatical flaws that occur are simply the result of this
translation.
5. the
protective effect of humates
The increase in ionized radiation and pollution of our environment with
herbicides, pesticides, heavy metal compounds, and other toxic mutagenic and
carcinogenic substances presents a real danger to living organisms today and
their progeny in the future. Considering
the soil pollution by water soluble heavy metal salts in the industrial regions
and the long-term excessive use of mineral fertilizer, pesticides, and
herbicides in agricultural regions, the crops, particularly vegetables and
root-crops, accumulate excess amounts of harmful admixtures.
That is why the creation of pure agricultural technologies is one of the
most important tasks of our time.
The protective effect of humates develop in the
following directions:
Protection
from radioactive irradiation and its consequences.
Protection
from harmful admixtures in the atmosphere, soil, and subsoil waters in
technogenic districts.
Protection
from the consequences of the pesticides and other chemicals used in agriculture.
Protection
from unfavorable environmental factors in zones of risky agriculture.
Decrease
in content of the nitrates that form when nitrogen fertilizer is used.
Long-term research showed that humic substances bond many organic and
non-organic substances into poorly soluble or insoluble compounds, which
prevents their penetration from soil into subsoil waters and growing plants.
It reduces the toxic effect of residual amounts of herbicides, soil
polluting radio nuclides, heavy metals, and other harmful substances, as well as
radiation and chemical contamination. Tests
showed that even after 50% affection of the plant, its vital functions are
completely restored due to the humic preparation effect.
This unique quality of humates is particularly important for the regions
in Russia, Byelorussia, and Ukraine that are contiguous to the Chernobyl region.
In the future it could be used to gradually restore contaminated land.
Modern floriculture is not possible without the use of different
chemicals necessary to fight weed, pest, and plant disease.
It is widely known, however, that the use of those chemicals causes a
number of negative effects due to their accumulation in the soil.
The infamous fact of DDT accumulation led to its complete banning.
However, DDT appearance still occasionally occurs in crops.
Science proved that sodium humate reduces the damaging effect of the
pesticide atrazine by increasing its decomposition, which leads to an increase
in the crop capacity of barley.
The use of humates in zones of risky agriculture is particularly
important. Unfortunately, most
territories of Russia can be considered risky.
In the south, the humates help to fight the effect of droughts, since it
has been established that the humate treatment of plants ensures their drought
resistance. In Siberia and in the
north of Russia, humate treatment can save the plants from late frosts.
In the 1960s, a corn crop was saved by colleagues of Irkutsk university,
after an unexpected frost. In 1996,
in the Angarsk region, a strong frost happened on the 19th of June.
The parts of the potato fields that had been treated with the humates
were the only undamaged parts.
Watering soil with a 0.01% humate solution substantially increases
the biological activity of the soil and boosts plants resistance against the
harmful waste in technogenic zones of chemical and coking industries.
In 1998, in Buryatia, wide scale tests were carried out in treating of
saline soils with humates. The
results showed a 214% increase in crops of green herbage, in comparison with the
control group.
The ability of humates to create complexes and their high sorption
activity are used to bond the ions of heavy metals in contaminated soil.
That is why increased amount of humates (up to 20-30 kg per hectare)
should be used on contaminated soil to ensure the contact and create favorable conditions for forming of complexes.
Humates
accelerate water-exchange processes and physiological processes in the cell and
participate in oxidation processes at the cell level. They are conducive to complete assimilation of mineral
nutrients in the plant, particularly in abnormal cases, such as saline soils,
drought, and other unfavorable
environmental factors.
An important quality of humates is their ability to decrease the level of
nitrate nitrogen in produce. It was
proven by tests on a variety of crops (oats, corn, potatoes, root-crops,
lettuce, cucumbers) that humate use decreases the nitrate content by 50% on
average. At the Dnepropetrovsk
agricultural institute, field tests were carried out on chernozem soils. Two crop cultures were tested - corn and barley (as second in
the crop rotation). The herbicide
atrazine (4 kg per hectare) was used on the corn.
The results showed that atrazine reduced the growth of weeds by 80% and
increased the crop capacity of the corn by 19%-20%. However, the residual amounts of
the herbicide reduced the crop capacity in barley, which was sown after
the corn in crop rotation, by 16%. The
use of sodium humate considerably changed the situation.
It stimulated corn growth and increased the crop capacity by an
additional 10%, while the nitrates content (NO3) in the corn of honey and pearl
ripeness decreased from 280.1 mg/kg to 199.7 mg/kg in laboratory tests and to
707 mg/kg in field tests. Barley grown after the corn was noted to improve its
germination, growth, and mass gaining, while containing less atrazine and more
chlorophyll in the leaves. The crop
capacity of the barley increased by 5.2 centner per hectare, with a total crop
capacity reaching 30.9 centner per hectare.
It was also noted that the atrazine content in the final produce
decreased by 52%-71%, which made it an ecologically pure produce.
Thus, humic preparations are the reliable protection for plants and crops against harmful admixtures from our environment (soil, subsoil waters, rain-water, and the atmosphere), which is more polluted each day. They also protect crops from unfavorable environmental factors (drought, ionizing radiation, etc.).