Growcentia offers sustainable solutions for all growing methodologies to maximise plant yield – from indoors and greenhouses to open field outdoors.
Our mission at Growcentia is to bring value to cultivators and growers by bringing nature back to agriculture with our Mammoth Microbes products. We accomplish this by developing, manufacturing and distributing to the global market our functionally targeted organic biological solutions (microbial biostimulants) that helps to maximise plant yield and quality.
Our biological solutions are developed using cutting-edge science that harnesses beneficial interactions among plants, microbes and soils that have evolved over millennia. Our biological solutions are effective, efficacious and organic. We believe that every grower can use our technologies because they are compatible with all management practices. Our patented technology is validated through numerous third-party studies, peer-reviewed publications and, most importantly, by the real-world experience of thousands of growers around the world to effectively and efficiently maximise plant yield.
When and why did Growcentia and Mammoth Microbes get started?
Growcentia was founded in 2015 by three PhD soil microbial research scientists and ecologists (Drs Bell, Conant and Wallenstein) to develop microbial solutions that enhance crop yield and health, keeping environmental sustainability top of mind.
Our goal, then, and what drives the company forward today, is solving a problem facing growers around the world: how to increase crop yields and quality in a sustainable manner without increasing unit input costs significantly. We focus on creating innovative solutions for cultivators by developing organic, proprietary, shelf-stable products that increase plant yields and quality and deliver a strong ROI to growers.
What are the key pain points that growers have that your products will help to solve? What is needed to maximise plant yield and quality?
Our first product, Mammoth® P (P = phosphorous) contains a functionally targeted co-cultured consortia of bacteria that are superior at increasing the availability of phosphorus and micronutrients to plants. Phosphorus is important because it is an essential macro-element, required for the success of all known life forms.
Phosphorus is especially necessary for early-stage root development, stem strength, resistance to disease, nutrient uptake, flower formation and yield. We developed this technology to solve a problem facing farmers – when P fertiliser is applied, up to 70% becomes almost immediately unavailable for plant uptake due to high chemical sorption capacities of mineral surfaces (i.e. Ca, Al and Fe) commonly found in soil and various substrates.
The microbes in our technology were developed to unlock bound nutrients from soils, coco coir and other hydroponic media, mobilising phosphorus back into the hydroponic nutrient or soil solution and thereby maximising plant-available P to significantly increase crop yield, health and quality.
How do you develop these innovative products?
We originated as university-based PhD research scientists. Our deep expertise in the soil microbiome, microbial nutrient cycling and plant-microbe interactions forms the basis for our novel approach to developing products that promote efficiency and profitability for cultivators and producers. Our novel technology development platform uses high-throughput phenotypic assays to improve upon soil functional attributes through targeted selective breeding. We operate at the level of the consortium rather than at the level of the individual strain, thereby co-selecting bacterial strains that function synergistically.
Our first microbial biostimulant that we developed, Mammoth P, is a functionally targeted consortia of bacteria that are superior at increasing the availability of P and various micronutrients to plants. This solution is a patented technology that was developed utilising our proprietary microbial trait selection platform that allows us to rapidly screen millions of soil microbes to identify those with superior functional traits.
Our first technology solution has been awarded two patents and a third is pending. We have provisional patents on two new technology solutions targeting N (nitrogen) and K (potassium). In trials across the world with growers of all sizes, our P technology has been proven to be highly effective at delivering a significant ROI. Our P technology is organic and OMRI certified in the USA and Canada as well as being registered OIM in California.
Our technology exists as a result of functionally target groups of microbial species that are able to exhibit a synergistic relationship in nutrient mobilisation for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The consortia were selected using our directed selection high-throughput evolutionary pipeline that is able to whittle down the vast diversity of bacterial species in nature to the top consortia species for mineralisation or solubilisation of nutrients.
When inoculated in the plant rhizosphere, they establish and are able to work symbiotically with the plant to increase nutrient availability and uptake. This increased nutrient use efficiency has ancillary benefits by reducing fertiliser run-off and nitrous oxide emissions. Additionally, our technologies have the potential to increase the quality makeup such as terpene and cannabinoid profiles of the post-harvest crop.
What are other reasons that growers implement the use of your products?
High-value crop farmers who are interested in increasing the yield, health and quality of their plants through the utilisation of inputs that deliver a healthy ROI utilise our product.
They incorporate our product into their feeding regime by adding it into their water reservoirs, automated dosing systems, irrigation systems, fertigation infrastructure etc.
In addition, growers who are focused on growing naturally with sustainable products incorporate our technology. The microbes in our solutions help to increase nutrient uptake, therefore leaving less in the soil or running off in hydroponic systems, thus delivering a more environmentally friendly solution.
Similarly, cultivators who are growing organically look to Mammoth as their organic solution delivering greater macro- and micro-nutrient use efficiency.
Are microbial and biological solutions a fad or are they here to stay?
Plant-microbial interactions have the potential to drive the next green revolution in agriculture in general. Contemporary agricultural practices have neglected these relationships; thus, we develop microbial solutions for agriculture crop production, in general, focused on high-value specialty cash crops that focus on plant-microbial interactions.
We focus on how we can enhance these environmental interactions to increase plant nutrient use efficiency and increase the quality and value of harvested plants. We expect to continue to create amazing technological innovations with our market leading top-notch scientists and the scientific capabilities within our company. We are focused on bringing innovative solutions to growers to help plants reach their maximum potential.
How do I get or find Mammoth?
We deliver a product into the cannabis and hemp markets that brings a substantial ROI to growers. Cultivators around the world have adopted Mammoth into their home gardens and commercial-scale farms and cultivation facilities. Mammoth can be purchased both through hydroponic grow stores and our distribution partners in the US, UK, EU, South America, Australia and Japan, as well as through other locations and distribution channels.
The store finder on the Mammoth Microbes website at is a great place to source Mammoth.
Mammoth is a very concentrated product and applied at just 0.6ml/US gallon or 0.16ml/litre of water. Due to the concentrated nature of our technology, Mammoth delivers great results at a very low cost per application.
Can I use Mammoth with synthetic or other organic products?
The microbes in Mammoth P are compatible with all nutrient lines, growth media (including soil, soil-less, and recirculating hydroponic systems) and additives. The microbes in Mammoth P are also very synergistic with other microbial additives and work very well with mycorrhizae (as well as other fungal and bacterial additives) to create a thriving rhizosphere and maximise plant nutrient uptake to enhance plant health, quality and yield.
The microbes in Mammoth P function so well because they create a beneficial relationship with plants in the rhizosphere (around the roots). The plant-microbial interactions mimic the nutrient cycling processes that occur between plants and microbes in nature. Our microbial formula simply allows farmers to use beneficial microbes with functional precision, confidence and predictability in their managed systems.
What does the future hold?
Our future product development plans are to continue to create consortia that can focus on the liberation of a variety of macro- and micro-nutrients as well as effecting plant development through metabolic interactions.
In addition, as we look forward, we are also focused on delivering precision agricultural solutions targeting plant quality enhancements, driving even greater ROI for growers around the world.
Gregg Steinberg
CEO
Growcentia Inc
+1 970-818-3321
info@mammothmicrobes.com
www.mammothmicrobes.com
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Please note, this article will appear in issue 9 of Health Europa Quarterly, which will be available to read in April 2019.
