Healthy soils lead to healthy plants and animals

Dr Louis du Pisani shed light on why biodiversity is important, and its impact on soil, plant and animal health at the World Veterinary Association Congress held in Cape Town. 

- Glenneis Kriel

Soil health, veld health and animal health are interconnected: you cannot separate the one from the other. This was the message from agri-consultant Dr Louis du Pisani during his presentation, ‘The rangeland microbiome and its benefits to ruminant productivity and health’ at the World Veterinary Association Congress held in Cape Town recently.

He said the role and importance of soil health in rangelands and grasslands only really started receiving attention in the past decade: “Knowledge in this field has more than quadrupled over the past few years, and yet there still is a lot that is not understood because of the incredible complexity of the soil microbiome.”

Historically, plant organic matter content was seen as the biggest driver of soil health, but today the importance of micro-organisms is also recognised. It was also thought that these organisms were evenly distributed through the soil.

Today, however, we know they are mostly concentrated in the area between the roots of plants called the rhizosphere.

While every single organism plays a crucial role in creating a healthy biosystem, Du Pisani identified bacteria, mycorrhizal fungi and archaea as specifically important because of their influence on plant production.

THE ROOT MICROBIOME

He explained that plants and soil microorganisms were in a symbiotic relationship: the plants supply the micro-organisms with some of the energy they produced during photosynthesis while the soil micro-organisms provided various services in exchange.

Phosphorous and nitrogen, for instance, are inaccessible to plants in an inorganic state.