Cropping & Soil
1 June, 2026
The hidden feeding system beneath your crop
FOR decades we’ve been told that plants take up nutrients straight from the soil and fertiliser is essential to nutrient availability, but that’s only half the story.
The real action happens at the root tip, where plants run a nutrient-delivery system that’s been operating for millions of years and is only now getting the attention it deserves.
It’s called rhizophagy, and it’s changing the way farmers think about plant nutrition.
Rhizophagy simply means plants eating microbes.
It is a highly efficient, finely tuned cycle that delivers nutrients directly into plant cells.
And unlike synthetic fertiliser, which typically achieves only 30–40 per cent uptake, rhizophagy delivers nutrients with near perfect efficiency.
Here’s the short version.
Plants pump out exudates (sugars, amino acids and organic acids) into the soil.
These exudates attract beneficial microbes to the root tip.
The microbes enter the plant, where they’re exposed to reactive oxygen species (ROS) that strip the microbes of their cell walls.
The nutrients from those cell walls are absorbed by the plant.
The now depleted microbes are pushed back out through the root hairs, return to the soil, rebuild themselves using organic matter, multiply, and return to the root to start again.
It’s a natural nutrient delivery loop that predates fertiliser by hundreds of millions of years.
The microbes involved (endophytes) don’t just feed the plant, they stimulate root hair growth, produce hormones that drive stronger plant development, increase antioxidant levels, and help plants tolerate drought, salinity and pest pressure.
They even compete with pathogens, acting as a natural line of defence.
But here’s the catch, many modern farming practices unintentionally disrupt this cycle.
Continuous tillage breaks up microbial habitats.
Overuse of synthetic fertilisers suppresses microbial activity.
Fungicides and herbicides, while often necessary, can harm the very organisms plants rely on to feed themselves.
None of this is news to farmers, but the link to rhizophagy gives us a clearer picture of what’s happening below ground.
This doesn’t mean walking away from conventional tools.
No farmer can afford to risk production, but it does mean we can make small, practical adjustments that support the biology already working for us.
That’s where biological stimulants and inoculants come in.
Products like NutriSoil Biological Solution help rebuild microbial populations, increase photosynthesis, and deliver living and dormant microbes directly to the plant.
Used with good monitoring (soil and sap testing), balanced nutrients, good grazing management and reduced synthetic inputs where possible, they help restore the natural nutrient delivery system plants evolved to use.
Keeping living roots in the soil through cover crops, minimising chemical stress, buffering sprays with products like NutriSoil that contain fulvic and humic acids, and prioritising calcium for strong root development all strengthen the rhizophagy cycle.
These aren’t radical changes, they’re practical tweaks that align management with biology.
Mother Nature has perfected the rhizophagy cycle, which requires biologically active soils.
When we support that biology, crops don’t just cope, they perform.
For farmers looking to stretch fertiliser further, build resilience, and get more from every unit of nutrient, understanding rhizophagy might be one of the most valuable tools you add to your kit this season.
For the month of June NutriSoil will be covering freight charges on all orders of 200 litres or more of NutriSoil.