Word: humus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...sometimes I learn more from the student than he learns from me." Such a student came to Waksman in 1924 to work for his Ph.D.: a young (23) Frenchman named René Jules Dubos. Waksman turned Dubos loose on the activities of microbes in reducing plant fibers to humus...
...Then geochemists look to the neighboring plants, whose roots reach into the soil and draw mineral-laden water to the surface. When the water evaporates through the leaves, the minerals it carried remain in the plant's tissues, eventually falling to the ground and becoming part of the humus on the surface. Geophysicists analyze this "biologically enriched" layer and the leaves of growing plants. Finnish geochemists found a rich copper-nickel deposit by examining the ashes of birch leaves...
Mighty Gut. A termite digests cellulose with the help of the swarms of protozoa (one-celled animals) which teem in its guts. Since termites reduce cellulose (the toughest part of plants) to humus and provide food for new plants, their destruction of wood is really a vital part of the vegetative cycle of growth and decay...
...farmer, White has no illusions: "I have been fooling around this place for a couple of years, but nobody calls my activity agriculture. I simply like to play with animals." "A good farmer," he observes, "is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus...
...nitrogen (33% of the return) to the soil as manures and chemical fertilizers together. But their natural activity can be artificially increased if more bacteria are mixed with legume seed and planted with it. This process is called soil inoculation. Farmers buy the inoculating bacteria in cans of moist humus or bottles of sugary jelly. Enough bacteria for an acre cost from 25? to 40?, will fix from 100 to 200 lb. of nitrogen. This is equivalent...