Nano Growth Technology

Tribomechanical
Activation“TMA”

How Herbagreen works

Foliar fertilizer

TMA - The Technology behind Herbagreen

A number of minerals are and have been used in agriculture, especially Calcites and Zeolites, and various techniques have been tried to activate minerals to increase reactivity and capacity of these raw materials.
TriboMechanical Activation (TMA) is a discovery made by Tihomir Lelas, a Croatian researcher and scientist. It is a new process of micronisation which enables production of submicron mineral particles and it involves a dynamic development of friction. The process originates from a TriboMechanical disintegrator which was designed during the Nineteen Fifties and was initially used to activate coal. The device consists of two discs running in opposite directions at a very high speed, each one carrying steel stems entering into a collision with the mineral particles. This technique resulted in a 30% increase of the calorific value of coal, but the collisions caused the wear of the steel stems: this technique was neither profitable, nor applicable to the field of health care or agro-alimentary requiring a perfect purity of the processed material.
Tihomir Lelas has been improving this innovation since the Nineteen Seventies, developing TriboMechanical activation by replacing the steel stems by ailerons, thus allowing the aerodynamic drive of the mineral particles. In this new activator, the discs pulled by rotors at a very high speed created an extremely large number of collisions between the mineral particles, and not between the mineral and metal: the particles undergo three collisions per millisecond at speeds as high as Mach 2.

Herbagreen micronised calcite particles are thus characterised by higher reactivity and a surface that is 300% more active than the mechanical processes used for milling. The surface of the particles is then said to be ‘activated’
The concept of the product is entirely an innovative one: the TriboMechanical activation is the only technique through which such a particle distribution (0.1 to 40μ) is obtained with no metal residue present inside, and without the contribution of electrochemical techniques, which would otherwise spoil the natural composition of the mineral.

How Herbagreen works

Once the Herbagreen powder is mixed with water and sprayed on a leaf surface, Herbagreen starts working through directly penetrating the leaf pores (stomas – leaf organs which control the gas exchange in the plant) travelling through to the plants interior. This is possible due to the granulometry of Herbagreen (0.1μm-40μm) which is much less than the size of a leaf’s pore opening (ostiole).
Due to the increased bioactivity in the leaf, the calcium and magnesium carbonates gradually disintegrate into oxides (CaO and MgO) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). The carbon dioxide creates a leaf microclimate suitable for photosynthesis, it is used to create carbohydrates, and decreases the plant's need for water. Calcium, magnesium and iron increase the plant's resistance to disease (chlorosis, necrosis) and pests (downy mildew, gray mould, oidium), and promote chlorophyll creation. The silicon increases the plant's energy status, improves its growth and significantly shortens the time necessary for plant ripening.
In other words, the treatment with Herbagreen provides a micro-scale replication of the conditions that a leaf encounters in a greenhouse. Herbagreen provides all the necessary nutrients for the plant by dissolving into CO₂ and CaO, resulting in a permanent supply of CO₂ inside the leaf making the plant almost self sustainable.

Common outcomes are less water consumption, vibrant colours, more fruit production, and stronger resistance to diseases and pests.

Foliar fertilizing explained

“Roots are leaves in the ground, and leaves are roots in the air”.
—Alan Chadwick
While it is true that the major elements nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) are more economically supplied in solid form, some experts believed that it was only the quantity of these that counted. However, the mere presence of a particular chemical element in the soil does not guarantee the effective assimilation of mineral fertilisers by plants.

Nutrient demand curves indicate stages in a plant's life-cycle when the need for some nutrients may be greater than the plant’s physiological capacity to supply itself, even when these soil nutrients are abundantly available. Highly soluble potassium and nitrogen-based fertilisers can be easily washed out from the soil, and phosphate fertilisers can attach themselves to ions of potassium, magnesium, aluminium and iron into a chemically insoluble form for plants.

Foliar nutrients on the other hand are mobilised directly into plant leaves, which is the goal of fertilization to begin with, increasing the rate of photosynthesis in the leaves, and by doing so stimulate nutrient absorption by plant roots.

Foliar fertilizer used in conjunction with solid fertilizer, can be used to quickly correct a nutrient imbalance and stimulate increase in root uptake. This does not mean that foliar fertilizer replaces solid fertilizer, but the use of foliar fertilizer has been shown to increase the availability of the applied major elements, that have been applied in solid form.

By applying a foliar fertilizer directly to the leaf, it increases the activity in the leaf, at the same time increasing chlorophyll and thus photosynthesis. And by increasing photosynthesis, we increase production and efficiency. This increased efficiency can reduce the need for soil applied fertilizer, which reduces leaching and run off of fertilizing nutrients.

Excess carbohydrate produced by the plant, due to greater synthesis of sugars by the increased chlorophyll, are excreted by the root hairs which stimulate microbial colonies on the root by providing additional energy sources. The bacterial colonies in turn provide auxins and other root stimulation compounds. More root tissue and root hairs increases the plants ability to take up water and fertilizer ions.
The aim of fertilization is the same for both soil applied as well as foliar applied, but it is, in fact 8-10 times more effective to foliar feed a plant as far as the amount of nutrients required and the speed with which those nutrients were utilized.