You asked for it – so here some comments 😉

What do you want to test with the corn? Yield? Quality? What is quality? Carbon sequestration? Human health?

S1: I think it is true that healthy soil needs well fed microbes, but this is very general. You have to be aware that all plants have their own distinct microbial footprint, these microbes have then their own specific food requirements.

S2: How do you plan to use your product? The consensus is that seed priming is the most efficient way to get the plant microbe relationship going. My wild guess would be that time between product application and seeding is critical for success. Both John Kempf and Nicole Masters stated that microbial inoculation tends not to get fungi going very well. Except a good compost like Johnson-Su, korean natural farming or vermicompost. These composts (good quality given) supposedly get fungi/mykorrhiza going even when they do not contain fungi themselves.

S3: we hope so. Since we don’t know too much about microbial footprint and food sources and all those relationships the usual approach is to give diversity. Might be an idea for further trials to see if corn with a companion crop and your product does behave differently.

S4: I know bacteria – fungi ratios are of importance, but I don’t know much about them. It seems though that different crops are on different levels of the spectrum. So basically you might have to change your microbial inoculation and food source depending on the target crop.

S5: As a sales person you obviously want people to buy your product, but do you think you have to do the inoculation for each crop cycle? Or can we maintain the microbes another way?