Humic Acid: A Beneficial Adjuvant for Herbicide Reduction

Phoenix Habitats has multiple years of field trial experience using Humic Acids as an adjuvant for herbicide, achieving total herbicide concentration reductions of 50% or more. This is an organic, naturally occurring substance found in soil humus with beneficial impacts to soil microbiology and long term soil health in sprayed areas. Further study is needed, but Humic Acids might be the safest, most beneficial technology available to reduce herbicide usage for invasive weed control. So let's explore this technology here:

What is Humic Acid?

Humic acid is a naturally occurring organic compound that is a major component of humus, the stable, decomposed organic matter found in soil, peat, and coal. It forms over millennia through the microbial degradation and decomposition of plant and animal matter. Humic substances, including humic acids, fulvic acids, and humin, are crucial for soil chemistry and biology. Humic acids are generally larger molecules, primarily influencing soil structure, while fulvic acids are smaller and more soluble, working more directly at the cellular level within plants.

For agricultural products, humic acid is typically extracted from humified materials such as lignite (a type of soft brown coal) or peat. The extraction process often involves using alkaline solutions to dissolve the humic acid, followed by filtration and processing to create liquid formulations. These formulations are designed to be readily applicable in farming practices.

General Benefits for Soil and Plant Health

Humic acid offers a wide range of benefits that contribute to overall soil and plant health:

Benefits for Soil:

• Improved Soil Structure and Compaction: Humic acids create space between soil particles, which helps to decrease soil compaction. This leads to increased water penetration and holding capacity, allowing for better aeration and higher oxygen content in the soil.
• Enhanced Water Holding Capacity: By creating a more porous soil structure, humic acid acts like a sponge, significantly improving the soil's ability to retain moisture. This is especially beneficial in drought conditions, as plants can access water for longer periods.
• Nutrient Reservoir and pH Neutralization: Humic substances form complexes that can hold onto nutrients, creating a reservoir that makes them readily available for root uptake. They also play a role in neutralizing soil pH. For instance, under acidic conditions, humic acids bind heavy metals, making them immobile and promoting the formation of clay-humic complexes that help neutralize acidic soil. This buffering capacity helps maintain a more favorable pH range for nutrient availability.
• Increased Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC): Humic acids create negatively charged clay particle complexes. A higher CEC means the soil can hold onto more positively charged nutrient ions (cations) like calcium, magnesium, and potassium, preventing them from leaching away and making them available to plants.
• Stimulation of Soil Microbes: Humic molecules, with their higher molecular weight, aid in stimulating beneficial soil microbial activity. A thriving microbial community contributes to nutrient cycling, decomposition of organic matter, and overall soil vitality.

Benefits for Plant Health:

• Enhanced Nutrient Availability and Uptake: One of the primary benefits of humic acid for plants is its ability to increase nutrient availability. Through a process called chelation, humic acid binds to nutrients, forming stable complexes that are more soluble and easily absorbed by plant roots. This makes essential nutrients like phosphates and various micronutrients more accessible, even if they were previously "locked up" or unavailable in the soil.
• Improved Plant Growth and Vigor: By facilitating better nutrient absorption and creating a healthier root environment, humic acid promotes stronger and more vigorous plant growth. This can lead to increased biomass and overall plant resilience.
• Stress Tolerance: The enhanced nutrient uptake and improved water relations provided by humic acid can help plants withstand various environmental stresses, such as drought, nutrient deficiencies, and even certain disease pressures.

Humic Acids are used in Agriculture to Increase Fertilizer Effects

In agriculture, humic acids are widely used as a soil amendment and a component in fertilizer programs to maximize the efficiency of applied nutrients. Its mechanisms directly translate into better utilization of fertilizers and nutrient sprays:

• Increased Fertilizer Efficiency through Chelation: When applied alongside fertilizers, humic acid acts as a natural chelating agent. It forms soluble complexes with essential mineral nutrients from the fertilizers (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and micronutrients like iron and zinc). This chelation prevents these nutrients from reacting with other soil components and becoming insoluble or unavailable to plants. Instead, the humic-nutrient complexes remain in a form that plant roots can readily absorb, significantly increasing the uptake efficiency of the applied fertilizers. This means less fertilizer is wasted, and more of it reaches the plant where it's needed.
• Reduced Nutrient Leaching: By holding onto nutrients more effectively through increased CEC and chelation, humic acid helps to reduce the leaching of valuable fertilizers from the root zone, particularly in sandy soils or areas with high rainfall. This ensures that nutrients remain available to plants for a longer duration.
• Improved Absorption from Foliar Sprays: When humic acid is included in foliar nutrient sprays, it helps to enhance the absorption of nutrients directly through the plant leaves. Humic acid can act as a natural surfactant and a carrier, improving the spread and penetration of the nutrient solution on the leaf surface and facilitating the movement of nutrients into the plant cells. This allows for rapid nutrient delivery, which can be particularly beneficial for addressing immediate nutrient deficiencies or for crops that have difficulty absorbing nutrients from the soil.
• Catalyst for Other Agricultural Inputs: Beyond fertilizers, some humic products are engineered to interact with the soil's biological environment and act as a "catalyst" for other agricultural inputs, potentially making them work more effectively. This general benefit suggests a broader role in optimizing various aspects of crop management, including soil health and nutrient delivery systems.

In summary, humic acid is a powerful natural compound that enhances soil fertility and plant vitality by improving soil structure, water retention, and nutrient availability. Its ability to chelate nutrients and improve uptake makes it an invaluable tool for farmers looking to increase the effectiveness of their fertilizer applications and achieve healthier crops and higher yields.

How Humic Acid may Reduce Herbicide Usage

Humic acids are commonly used in agricultural practices to reduce the overall amount of fertilizers while achieving the same positive effect.  This is due to chelation and increased nutrient availability, as explained above.  So what if humic acids also increased the availability, absorption, and translocation of herbicides?  It turns out they can.  

• Reducing Herbicide Consumption by 50%: This is a completely organic, natural compound that mixes into herbicide spray formulations as an adjuvant, and can reduce overall herbicide concentrations by 50% or more while achieving the same effects on target plant mortality.  
• Applicable on all Invasive Species Targets that have been tested: Upcoming articles will show results of initial spray applications with humic acid, showing incredible results on targets like Himalayan Blackberry, English Ivy, Reed Canarygrass, Canada Thistle and more common invasive weed species in the Pacific Northwest.  All targets achieved mortality results at the same level or higher than conventional herbicide mixes without humic acids that contained twice the amount of active herbicide ingredients.
• Improved Soil Health in Spray Areas:  In addition to field trials with mortality results, Phoenix Regen has also studied beneficial impacts on soil health.  In herbicide mixes with humic acids, soil microbiology were not affected as severely and were able to produce dormant cyst or spores in order to withstand temporary effects of chemical pollution.  This indicates a better long term ability for soil microbiology to rebound and restore healthy soil function in sprayed areas.