Any farmer who has inoculated legume seed with Rhizobium bacteria to improve the nitrogen fixing ability of the about-to-be-planted grain crop or pasture would agree that it can be a pretty messy business.

Now, according to Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) consultant Greg Bender, new inoculants more user-friendly than the traditional one based on peat could be on the way. 

And, Dr Bender says, research on the liquid and granular inoculants could lead to the development of new inoculants that would protect crops against root diseases like Crown rot, Rhizoctonia, Take-all and Pythium.

Dr Bender told the recent “Soil Biology-Soil Health” conference in Dalby the GRDC began supporting Australian trials of the new liquid and granular inoculants after their success and widespread adoption in the United States and Canada.

“Positive results were obtained from testing liquid and granular inoculants against the more traditional peat-based products in national field trials in 2002 and 2003,” Dr Bender said.

“The GRDC initiated the Biological Inputs for Profitable Farming project to further develop these new inoculants for Australia, but the longer term idea is to use Rhizobium as a test bed for other inoculants under development in the R&D program. 

“If seasonal conditions allow, we expect the first of these products to become available in 2006.”

More than 100 delegates attended each day of the Dalby conference, which was organised by the Condamine Catchment Management Association conference with support from the Queensland Murray Darling Committee, the Condamine Alliance and the GRDC.

Dr Bender, who leads the GRDC’s Soil Biology Strategic Initiative, told the Dalby conference there had been general consensus among researchers and farmers for decades about the importance of soil biology for productivity and sustainability.

But managing soil biology to maximum effect was beyond most people because of the complexity of the system and the difficulty in analysing soil biology from a technical perspective.

The rapid response times of soil biota to rainfall, seasonal temperature variation, type of crop sown and agronomic practices – even on a day-to-day basis – made prediction and management even more difficult.