Podcast Short: Exploring Endophytes for Healthier Plants with Maizie Koentopp

This is the first time we’ve had a high schooler on the podcast!

Maizie Koentopp, a 9th grader in Chicago, conducted a simple yet elegant experiment on buckwheat plants. Motivated by her father’s urban farming work and her own concern about climate change, Maizie wanted to test the effect of endophytic bacteria on plant development as an alternative to harmful agrochemicals. She compared seeds inoculated with AEA’s BioCoat Gold™ to a non-inoculated control, and found that inoculated seeds (in both sterilized and non-sterilized soil) grew faster, had higher survival rates, and developed more root hairs.

If others in Maizie’s generation share her curiosity, poise, and scientific rigor, then our future is in good hands."

Additional Resources
To read more about her research, click here. 

About John Kempf
John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it.

Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology.

Support For This Show & Helping You Grow
Since 2006, AEA has been on a mission to help growers become more resilient, efficient, and profitable with regenerative agriculture. 

AEA works directly with growers to apply its unique line of liquid mineral crop nutrition products and biological inoculants. Informed by cutting-edge plant and soil data-gathering techniques, AEA’s science-based programs empower farm operations to meet the crop quality markers that matter the most.

AEA has created real and lasting change on millions of acres with its products and data-driven services by working hand-in-hand with growers to produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and higher profits.

Beyond working on the ground with growers, AEA leads in regenerative agriculture media and education, producing and distributing the popular and highly-regarded Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, inspiring webinars, and other educational content that serve as go-to resources for growers worldwide.

Learn more about AEA’s regenerative programs and products: https://www.advancingecoag.com

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hi, friends, this is John.
Welcome back to the Region of
Agriculture podcast, where we
have all kinds of fun
conversations related to soil
health and plant health.
And in this in this fascinating
world, as we are learning that
plants have brains and they have
the ability to think and to make
informed decisions,

(00:21):
they have
they make very conscious
specific informed decisions
about how to interact with their
environment, how to respond to
different stimulus,
how to associate and
support their microbiome or not.
It's,
we developed this,
we're developing a very
different perspective than what

(00:43):
we have generally collectively
held
historically on the way that
plants interact with their
environment, the way that they
interact with their microbiome.
And of course, the way we move
these boundaries forward is
constantly by researching,
by studying more and trying to
understand how
interactions are happening.
And some of these some

(01:04):
of these experiments can be very
sophisticated, but often some of
the best discoveries come from
the simple experiments or simple
observations out in the field.
So for our conversation today,
I'm joined by Maisie Canetop,
who
ran an experiment that
caught our team's attention here
at AEA. And they were delighted

(01:24):
by
the simplicity of the
experiment, the elegance of the
experiment and the results that
came out of it.
So Maisie, thank you for being
willing to join me today.
Tell us a little bit about
yourself, your background and
the experiment and what inspired
you to run this experiment.
For the past three
years at my middle school, we

(01:45):
have been required to do a
Stanford project every year.
and my dad is he works
in like an urban farm and works
to promote farm and
like the
He works in that area.
So I have grown up around always
hearing about that in my house.

(02:06):
And I knew I wanted to explore
something similar to that.
And a huge problem that I
think impacts a lot of young
people is climate change and the
impact on the environment that
humans are having.
So I wanted to connect those two
areas.
So I decided with the help of

(02:27):
two soil scientists,
Dr. Akila Martin and Dr.
Israel,
that I wanted to research how we
could exchange the use of
harmful agrochemicals that are
depleting soils and exchange
those for endophytes,
a type of bacteria,
which
instead of depleting soils,

(02:48):
helps regenerate them and
promotes
ecosystem health as well as
plant health.
And so what did your experiment
end up looking like?
So the way I started,
I took buckwheat seeds,
and I also took soil, and I
sterilized that soil because I
was only testing one type of
bacteria, so I needed to control
the environment.

(03:08):
And I inoculated some seeds,
and I didn't inoculate the other
seeds.
And I had four different groups.
I had one group that was the
control,
which was the non -inoculated
seeds grown in sterilized soil.
I had one group that was
inoculated seeds grown in
sterilized soil.
I had one group that was
inoculated seeds grown in non

(03:31):
-sterilized soil, so soil that
was just collected from my
garden.
And then I had a non
-sterilized,
sorry,
non -inoculated seeds grown in
non -sterilized soil.
I proceeded to grow those plants
for different periods of time.
So I had plants growing for two
weeks, four weeks, and then
three months.

(03:52):
And after that,
period of time, I would collect
plant samples and clean them
with a mesh to get all the soil
off the roots.
And originally, my plan was to
use a software called Rizovision
that analyzes plant root hairs.
But
unfortunately, I didn't have

(04:14):
access to the proper technology
to use that software.
So I ended up having to
engineer my plan and I decided
to use a microscope to take
pictures of the roots and then
count the root hairs myself
instead of using the software to
do it for me.
Which ended up taking a little

(04:34):
more time than I had originally
planned
but it ended up it ended up okay
and I discovered after
collecting samples from all my
data
from all four groups that the
plants that were inoculated
overall
despite being in non -sterilized

(04:55):
soil versus sterilized soil,
overall had the most number of
root hairs.
So root hairs are,
unlike a root,
they have little shoots that you
can't see with your eyes,
they're microscopic,
and they allow bacteria to cycle
through the plant.
So by measuring root hairs, it
was a good way to see how the

(05:16):
endophytes were actually
impacting the plant.
And I also measured bricks,
which is a way to measure the
sugar level of a plant.
or of any liquid.
And I found that,
well,
originally I thought that the
plants that were inoculated
would have higher brooks levels,
but it turned out they didn't,
which I realized was because

(05:36):
they were using their sugars to
flower,
while the plants that weren't
inoculated still were using
their sugars to produce
cotyledons and grow new leaves,
which meant that the sugars were
more concentrated,
which
in turn supported my original
hypothesis that the inoculated
plants and that the endophytic
bacteria would benefit the

(05:57):
plants.
So this is an important point.
Did you observe the plants to be
at different developmental
stages or to develop at
different speeds based on
whether they were inoculated?
The inoculated plants,
not only did they develop
faster, but they also had a
higher survival rate.
So the plants that weren't
inoculated, more of them died
and didn't survive.
The plants that were inoculated

(06:17):
had healthier, fuller leaves and
began to flower faster, while
the plants that weren't
inoculated
hadn't started to flower yet by
the time my experiment ended.
So even over the course of a 90
-day experiment, they were not
yet at the flowering stage,
which is quite slow for
buckwheat.
Yeah.
I think that's also due to the

(06:38):
fact that it was in serum soil,
so there was very little
microbial activity.
which wasn't great for the
buckwheat plant.
How significant were the
differences that you observed in
the root hair development?
And I'm also curious just about
the overall root biomass.
What did the root biomass and
the root hair development,
how was it different?
And I'm also curious about how

(06:58):
it was different on the
sterilized versus the non
-sterilized soil.
Yeah,
so I didn't take the biomass of
the roots. I only looked at root
hair growth.
and originally I wanted to
measure like the length of root
hairs, but I wasn't able to do
that without like the software
that I wanted to use, so I

(07:18):
couldn't do that in my
experiment.
So the plants grown that were
inoculated in sterile soil
versus
non -inoc, like the non
-inoculated ones in sterile
soil,
they had pretty,
they had like a
pretty similar numbers.
The ones that were inoculated
did have more overall, but they

(07:40):
were closely followed by the
ones
that weren't inoculated.
The biggest difference,
even though they had similar
root hairs, the biggest
difference was in the
growth that I observed, like how
quickly they developed.
And what was, how would you
describe the differences?
How much more rapidly did the

(08:00):
plants develop that were
inoculated?
What were the,
if you can describe that?
They were
very different.
At the end of my experiment,
um, I have, I took photos of the
control and the plants that
were,
um,
the seeds that were, weren't
inoculated and compared them to
the ones that were.

(08:20):
And the plants that weren't
inoculated, they only had like,
like five leaves, and they still
had cotyledons, as I said, and
they weren't flowering, and they
were pretty short,
um,
while the plants that were, they
were tall, like they were like
spilling out of the containers,
and they had many leaves, and
the leaves were fully developed,

(08:40):
and they were flowering.
So that was on the sterilized
soil. Was a similar pattern also
true on the non -sterile soil?
Yeah,
they were less developed than
the plants that were inoculated
in the non -sterilized soil,
but
they
were kind of like in the middle
ground.

(09:01):
So they had developed leaves and
didn't have cotyledons anymore,
but weren't as far along as the
plants that were inoculated.
The central
thesis or hypothesis that you
were
that your testing method is
based on is you're extrapolating
the presence or the activity

(09:23):
of associated endophytes based
on root hair development
in essence.
And I'm sorry, I kind of
distracted you because I asked
about overall root biomass.
But what did you discover in
terms of the root hair
development
Did you have substantially more
root hair?
How much more?

(09:43):
So at the first
point,
the first time that I collected
the
root hairs,
the inoculated plants had a
huge amount
more.
It was very apparent.
They had triple

(10:04):
the amount of root hairs.
And then as time passed,
the other groups slowly started
to catch up. But the gap, they
were never able to close the
gap.
So
during the second
time
area, like the second - So you
were collecting at two weeks and
four weeks and then three

(10:24):
months, I think you said?
Three months.
Yeah.
So at the second time, they had
about 300 for
the,
that I counted, like the
roothers, the native microbes
and inoculated, and then this
native microbes.
And then the inoculated plants
had 600.
So it was,
almost triple, and then

(10:46):
after three months,
the plants that were inoculated
in sterilized soil
versus the plants that were
inoculated in native soil had
almost 300 more.
So over time, the gaps slowly
started to close, but the
inoculated plants always had

(11:06):
more fruit.
I
think this is a common
phenomenon that we observe in
practical application out in the
field, is that
when seeds are inoculated, there
is often this
this early and rapid
proliferation of biology.
And if you have soils that have
where the microbiome is
compromised,
they do have the ability to

(11:28):
recruit microbes from the soil
microbiome, but it just it takes
time to build up that soil, that
root microbiome.
and they never fully catch up to
what um so your your
experimental evidence matches
very well with what we observe
out in the field
so the what was the how

(11:49):
difficult was it to set up this
experiment and to conduct it
um i
had so when i started my
experiment i started it like
months more than three months
before like the deadline and
I had to repeat the experiment
three

(12:09):
times, because in the beginning,
my soil
had the pH wasn't
the right pH for the buckwheat.
And many of them died, and I
didn't have enough to collect
the number of samples that I
needed.
So then I started over,
and I repeated the same process
again.
And the same thing happened,
where they didn't survive.

(12:31):
So I did it a third time,
and I changed the pH by adding
sulfur.
because buckwheat prefers more
acidic soils.
And
this time I did have a lot of
samples.
I also think that
it was difficult for the
buckwheat to survive in
completely sterilized soil,

(12:51):
which contributed,
I think, to the higher
death rate of the buckwheat
plants.
So it was difficult to have
to redo my whole experiment
multiple times to get the
results that I wanted.
it was

(13:13):
another challenge for me was
taking all the pictures of all
the root samples because I had
I had a lot of groups I had a
lot of root samples and I was
taking I had to take like
like
70 between like 50 and 70 photos
of each sample and then count

(13:33):
the number of root hairs for
every single photo for every
single root.
And that took a lot of time.
So that was challenging,
but
it worked out in the end, so.
That sounds like a lot of
counting anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was a lot of testing.
So you mentioned the unexpected

(13:56):
results in regards to the
variation in BRICS response
versus the plants that were
flowering and those that were
not.
Were there any other results
that surprised you or that were
unexpected?
It surprised me that
the plants that
were grown in native microbes
were,

(14:16):
like
how you described earlier, like
they started with
lower number of root hairs and
it surprised me how they were
able to catch up over time.
But
my hypothesis in the end was
proven correct, so although the
BRICS number surprised me,
and the initial to

(14:39):
final numbers of plants grown
without the inoculant surprised
me,
the
overall results supported what I
initially thought.
I think it's worth noting for
for the benefit of our
listeners.
We're describing this experiment
in terms of the endophytic

(15:00):
microbes. And obviously you're
measuring root hair development
with, I think, based on Dr.
James White's work and other
people's work. Those certainly
are associated with the presence
of endophytes within the plant
and their activity.
And also the
product that you were using was
not just endophytic microbes
alone.
It was also mycorrhizal fungi

(15:20):
and other things.
And this year,
I'm building off of my project
from last year,
and I'm taking individual
strains of endophytes,
specifically Bacillus species,
like Bacillus subtilis and
Thuringiensis,
and inoculating buckwheat to see

(15:40):
how the specific strains impact
the root hairs.
And then I'm also growing
buckwheat on a farm to see how
the inoculant will work in a
actual agricultural environment
instead of in a lab laboratory
environment.
Yeah, it would be interesting.
Of course, it would add another

(16:02):
layer of complexity, but it
would be interesting to, again,
compare to see if there is a
contrast between the individual
species and the combination of
different species that also
includes the mycorrhizae.
Yeah.
Well,
Maisie, thank you.
Thank you for running the
experiment. Oh, our team would
not be happy if I didn't mention
that the product that Maisie was

(16:22):
using was actually BioCode Gold.
So Maisie, thank you for that
experiment.
Thank you for the
work that you're doing and being
willing to come on here onto the
show and to talk about it.
Thanks for all that you do.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
The team at AEA and I are
dedicated to bringing this show
to you because we believe that

(16:43):
knowledge and information is the
foundation of successful
regenerative systems.
At AEA, we believe that growing
better quality food and making
more money from your crops is
possible.
And since 2006,
we've worked with leading
professional growers to help
them do just that.
At AEA, we don't guess.
We test. We analyze.

(17:04):
And we provide recommendations
based on scientific data,
knowledge, and experience.
We've developed products that
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If you are a professional grower
who believes in testing instead
of guessing,
someone who believes in a
better, more regenerative way to
grow,
visit advancingecoag .com and

(17:25):
contact us to see if AEA is
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