Tea your Wheaties!!! Compost Tea Improves Wheat Growth in Salty Soil

Reducing the Adverse Effects of Salt Stress by Utilizing Compost Tea and Effective Microorganisms to Enhance the Growth and Yield of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Plants
February 2023
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Donuts, cakes, pastries of all shapes, sizes, crispiness, and colors owe their carb-laden glory to the humble wheat plant.  If we are to survive on this planet and have bread, we must do everything we can to help the cultivation of this croissant producing crop. 
      Thank goodness for the ag researchers at King Khalid University in Saudi Arabia.  These bagel saving scientists wanted to see how using compost tea and/or a group of known beneficial organisms (Effective Microorganisms, EM) helps the growth of wheat in soils with high sodium content.  Sodium in soils is an increasingly important problem to tackle if we want to keep eating food. 
       The experiment consisted of four groups of wheat plant plots, a control group that did not have tea or EM, and 3 treatments:  Compost Tea, EM, and Compost Tea + EM.    The EM consisted of Azospirillum brasiliense, Pseudomonas koreensis, and Bacillus circulans.  The tea preparation was not described in this paper, which is unfortunate.  The EM was applied with peat moss as the carrier at the time of seeding. Compost tea was applied as a foliar spray at 30 and 50 days after seed sprouting.  The experiment was ran for two different seasons so that there was enough data to produce reliable statistics. 
        At the end of the trials, the plants were assessed for growth, yield, uptake of nutrients, photosynthesis rates, and metabolic changes.   The researchers found that virtually all parameters were positively affected by the three treatments as compared to the control group.  The plants grew better, produced more usable wheat grains, more nutrients were taken up, antioxidant enzymes were increased, and the plants were more efficient at photosynthesis. 
      The combination of the two, tea and EM, were generally the best performing, while tea was in second place with EM as a close third.  This goes to show that tea can really make a huge impact on crumpet production.   Thanks Saudi scientists!!! Our late night buttermilk donut runs are forever indebted to you steadfast commitment to our gluten habit. 

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