Organic farming according to EU 2092/91 aims at closed nutrient cycles, which means that external nutrient inputs are kept to a minimum. By comparison, conventional farming is input orientated, focusing on high crop productivity. Soil analytical methods for organic farming comprise physical, biological, chemical, and energetic soil tests. The spade diagnosis is an old field test to obtain “in situ” information about soil fertility, which has experienced a renaissance in organic farming. At the laboratory level, organic farming uses the standard chemical analytical methods used in conventional agriculture comprising the determination of organic matter, humus dynamics, pH, soluble plant nutrients and reserve fractions. Special attention is paid to phosphorus, which is determined in three different extracts (acetic, lactic, and citric acid) to assess phosphorus dynamics, which is an indicator of the turnover of organic matter. Compared with conventional agriculture, biological methods are of particular interest in organic farming. Soil biological methods, such as the release of CO₂, nitrification, dehydrogenase, amylase and protease activities, reflect the biological activity of soils. Problems of biological methods are the high spatiotemporal variability in dependence on biotic, pedogenetic, and climatic conditions and the lack of interpretation schemes for a transformation into practical recommendations. The soil chroma test is a method that aims to analyze energetic processes in soils. It is a so-called “picture forming” method and characteristic for the biodynamic school of organic farming.

(Communications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis, 36: 65–79, 2005)

The practice of farming described as “organic” is promoted under many names (Merrill, 1983) and there is a general feeling that the term, because of other contentious meanings, may not be the most suitable description. However, as this term was the earliest used it is as well to understand its original meaning before adopting alternatives which may not fully express the meaning of the original.

The present organic movement grew from the influential publications of workers such “as Howard (1940), Balfour (1943) and Rodale (1945) which resulted from concern in the inter-war years over problems such as soil”erosion and health. The true roots of modern organic farming, however, lie earlier in the agriculture of the anthroposophic followers of Rudolf Steiner (1924). This movement, known as biodynamic agriculture, was developed from a series of eight lectures given by Steiner at the request of a group of German farmers concerned about the increasing degeneration they had noticed in seed-strains and in many cultivated plants: The origin of the term “organic farming” also lay here for Lord Northbourne, who first used the term “organic” in his forgotton classic “Look to the Land” (1940) (Harwood, 1983), was a practitioner of biodynamic farming. although it is not obvious from his book, and this provided him with the inspiration of his vision of the farm as a sustainable, ecologically stable, self-contained unit, biologically complete and balanoed-a dynamic living organic whole.

(Biological Agriculture and Horticulture. 1986, Vol 4, pp. 1-5)

History of bud chip

1. The famous sugarcane researcher, van Dillewijn (1952) stated that a small volume of tissue and a single root primordium adhering to the bud are enough to ensure germination in sugarcane.
2.  After a long gap of 22 years, Indian sugarcane experts, Narasimha Rao and Satyanarayana (1974) showed the feasibility of eliminating the internode part of the seed piece and using only buds for commercial planting.
3.  In year 1977, Andhra Sugars has fabricated bud chip machine and Ramaiah et al demonstrated bud chip technology using three varieties, Co 419, Co 975 and Co 997

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