Malted Barley as a Chitanease/ Chitan/ Enzyme source (Sprouted Seeds)

[Vandenberg]

Chitin and chitosan induces a systemic defense response that can promote an increase in chemicals naturally produced by the plant when pests and pathogens are present.
Use of this incredible compound puts plants “on guard” and ready to tackle any impending threat.
Because the plant already produces these defense compounds, its systemic immunity is higher, and if an attack happens, the plant can leap into action and protect itself much faster.
Incredibly, chitin shows a simultaneous ability to promote beneficial microflora propagation while interfering with or stopping undesirable ones’ proliferation.

Imho, Organic 2 Row Malted Barley is the schiznit.
All credit goes to the Clackamas Coot aka Jim Bennet for this recommendation, this particular affordable tidbit of knowledge has served me very well with organic soils.
To those who may wonder: The word Chitin is pronounced with a hard K sound so it becomes "kite-in" for those that haven' t heard it pronounced before.

Chitinase is an enzyme which acts to break down chitin.
It is possible to obtain chitin from some organic amendments, such as oyster shell powder, crustacean shell meal, insect frass, and mealworms.
It is also available in many commercially produced products in the water-soluble and active form of chitosan.

Barley contains these Enzymes -
amylase, arylsulphatase, β-glucosidase, cellulase, chitinase, dehydrogenase, phosphatase, protease and urease.

You can make your own Do It Yourself enzyme product for an affordable price.
Just grind up the Malted Barley seeds very finely that you got from the beer brewing supply guy and top dress your plant.
Application Rates range from 1 Tsp. for small plants up to 2 cups for large plants.
Just top-dress the ground-up now powdered malted barley and water it in.
It does need to be made fresh and probably should not be pre-ground to help preserve those enzymes.
No need to sprout the seeds yourself and risk anaerobic conditions although beware that a new sprouting and malting the Barley hobby can go on to lead to a lifelong battle with beeraholism...that's maybe a joke.

The store bought malted barley seed has already been partially germinated ( to perfection) and then when the process has been arrested at the point of highest enzymatic levels, it is then correctly dried, exactly what we would want from a horticulture perperspective, I would think.

Happy Gardening!,
Vandenberg

 

[Creeperpark]

Chitin is a structural component of arthropod exoskeletons, fungi cell walls, mollusk shells, and fish scales.

 

[Vandenberg]

What do Plant Enzymes do?​

Soil contains enzymes that interact with the surrounding soil constituents.
These include minerals, nutrients and rhizosphere among numerous others.
Enzymes are biocatalysts that speed up essential biochemical reactions for plants and rhizobacteria while stabilizing the soil by degrading wastes and contributing to nutrient recycling.

The Benefits of Enzymes for Plant Growth​

The nutritional quality of the soil can be improved by introducing enzyme-producing microbes or agricultural enzymatic formulations along with adding manure and fertilizer to it. Proteases when added to soil, degrade proteins in it and increase the amount of available nitrogen in the soil, thus improving the soil fertility. When urease is added to the soil, it increases bioavailable nitrogen levels that are beneficial for plant nutrition. Introducing enzymes to the soil promotes rhizobacteria that promote plant growth while reducing dependence on harmful chemical fertilizers and improving crop yield at the same time.

Soil enzymes also play a crucial role in the remediation of soil. Soil gets polluted in many ways and through impurities like heavy metals, polyphosphate rocks, urea, starch and cellulose residues. Contrary to popular belief the animal and plant fats are also not easily absorbed by plants either. Enzymes and selected microbes synergistically break down these residuals into compost, quickly making the soil fertile. These nutrients are now readily available for the plants as nutrition.

Agricultural Enzymes- Sources​

The source of soil enzymes can be microbes, plants, and animals. There are numerous enzymes found in the soil. The main among them are dehydrogenases, hydrogenases, oxidases, catalases, peroxidases, lipase, phosphatase, nuclease, phytase, amylase, cellulase, xylanase, dextranase, glucosidase, galactosidase, invertase, proteinase, peptidase, glutaminase, amidase, urease, inorganic pyrophosphatase, adenosine triphosphatase, aspartate decarboxylase, and glutamate decarboxylase among several others. Commercially these enzymes are sourced from microbe cultures of both fungi and bacteria. Though bacterial cultivation is an easy process compared to fungi, fungi have a larger portfolio of enzymes that can work in extreme conditions.

Types of Enzymes for Plant Growth​

Enzymes help in soil conditioning and make it nutrient-rich.
Some key enzymes that are particularly beneficial include amylase, lipase, cellulase, phosphatase, urease, phytase and chitinases.

1. Amylase​

Amylases are widely found in soil and are essential for a range of activities.
Amylases break down complex polysaccharides like starch into simpler forms of sugar or glucose that are readily absorbed by the plants and promote growth.

2. Phosphatase​

The phosphatase agricultural enzymes hydrolyze organic phosphorus compounds to inorganic phosphorus compounds. The latter is essential for enriching phosphorus in soils that lead to better fertility. Phosphatase can work in a broad range of pH and temperature and work both in acidic and alkaline soils.

3. Lipase​

Lipases are enzymes that break down lipids and fats, animal or vegetable sources into simpler forms making it easier for plants to absorb. They also assist in the seed germination process by hydrolyzing the triacylglycerols into fatty acids. These fatty acids are in turn converted to simple sugars that provide the nascent plant embryo with sufficient nutrition.

4. Phytase​

Phytase enzymes hydrolyze phytic acid into inorganic usable phosphorus. It also releases soluble zinc, iron and other nutrients beneficial to plant life like Myo-inositol, Myo-inositol phosphate, and inorganic monophosphate.

5. Urease​

Urease is considered a very important enzyme for plant nutrition. It hydrolyzes urea into carbon dioxide and ammonia, both of which are essential for plant nutrition.

6. Cellulase​

Cellulase enzyme hydrolyzes cellulose present in the form of crop residue into simpler forms and sugar that are readily absorbed by the soil. Cellulose is abundantly found in the soil and its breakdown provides the much-needed nutrients to the soil.

7. Chitinases​

Chitinases have a whole other way of working as enzymes for plant growth along with promoting plant growth.
These enzymes work on fungus species that are detrimental to plant health.
These enzymes destroy the fungus and protect the host plant from attack by breaking down the fungal cell wall made of chitin.

Conclusion​

Soil enzymes and select microbes play a key role in plant growth.
They render nutrient-rich soil, decrease composting time, build plant immunity against fungus and reduce the use of chemical fertilizers.
They are increasingly being used in organic farming.
They help increase crop yields and provide healthy organic food options to humanity.

Vandenberg

 

[Vandenberg]

Clackamas Coot aka Jim Bennett is the author of this and it is technical at times but some interesting information can be gleaned from this. I just breeze through the unpronounceable words to help make it painless to read. ​

Enzymes and Functions
by Jim Bennett June 11, 2020
This is a very partial list of the enzymes found in malted grains - less than 3% of the total count actually.

This subset that I selected have a direct impact when we apply them to our garden soils and equally important when added to our vermiculture process.

In the vermiculture discussion, these specific enzymes accelerate the reproduction of our worm colonies and as well as reducing the time required to turn our agricultural wastes into humus.

Amylase (/ˈæmɪleɪz/) is an enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of starch (Latin amylum) into sugars. Amylase is present in the saliva of humans and some other mammals, where it begins the chemical process of digestion. Foods that contain large amounts of starch but little sugar, such as rice and potatoes, may acquire a slightly sweet taste as they are chewed because amylase degrades some of their starch into sugar. The pancreas and salivary gland make amylase (alpha amylase) to hydrolyse dietary starch into disaccharides and trisaccharides which are converted by other enzymes to glucose to supply the body with energy. Plants and some bacteria also produce amylase. Specific amylase proteins are designated by different Greek letters. All amylases are glycoside hydrolases and act on α-1,4-glycosidic bonds.

Arylsulfatase catalyzes the desulfation of 3-O-sulfogalactosyl residues in glycosphingolipids. The enzyme activity requires the presence of saposin B as an activator. The ARSA gene maps to chromosome 22 at the end terminus and encodes a 507-amino-acid precursor protein that undergoes post-translational processing. In addition to N-linked glycosylation required for lysosomal sorting through the mannose-6 phosphate receptor pathway, there is a unique oxidation that occurs for eukaryotic sulfatases. In human arylsulfatase A, a formylglycine residue is found in place of cysteine 69 and is due to the oxidation of a thiol group to an aldehyde. In addition to sulfatide, arylsulfatase A will cleave sulfate groups from other naturally occurring glycosphingolipids including lactosylceramide-3-sulfate and psychosine sulfate.

Beta-glucosidase is an enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of the glycosidic bonds to terminal non-reducing residues in beta-D-glucosides and oligosaccharides, with release of glucose.[2]

Synonyms, derivatives, and related enzymes include gentiobiase, cellobiase, emulsin,elaterase, aryl-beta-glucosidase, beta-D-glucosidase, beta-glucoside glucohydrolase, arbutinase, amygdalinase, p-nitrophenyl beta-glucosidase, primeverosidase, amygdalase, linamarase, salicilinase, and beta-1,6-glucosidase.

Cellulose is an organic compound, a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to many thousands of β(1→4) linked D-glucose units.Cellulose is an important structural component of the primary cell wall of green plants, many forms of algae and the oomycetes. Some species of bacteria secrete it to form biofilms.

Cellulose is the most abundant organic polymer on Earth. The cellulose content of cotton fiber is 90%, that of wood is 40–50%, and that of dried hemp is approximately 57%.

Chitinases (chitodextrinase, 1,4-beta-poly-N-acetylglucosaminidase, poly-beta-glucosaminidase, beta-1,4-poly-N-acetyl glucosamidinase, poly[1,4-(N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminide)] glycanohydrolase, (1->4)-2-acetamido-2-deoxy-beta-D-glucan glycanohydrolase) are hydrolytic enzymes that break down glycosidic bonds in chitin.[1]

As chitin is a component of the cell walls of fungi and exoskeletal elements of some animals (including mollusks and arthropods), chitinases are generally found in organisms that either need to reshape their own chitin[2] or dissolve and digest the chitin of fungi or animals.

Dehydrogenase (also called DH or DHase in the literature) is an enzyme belonging to the group of oxidoreductases that oxidizes a substrate by reducing an electron acceptor, usually NAD+/NADP+ or a flavin coenzyme such as FAD or FMN.

They also catalyze the reverse reaction, for instance alcohol dehydrogenase not only oxidizes ethanol to acetaldehyde in animals but also produces ethanol from acetaldehyde in yeast.

Phosphatase is an enzyme that uses water to cleave a phosphoric acid monoester into a phosphate ion and an alcohol. Because a phosphatase enzyme catalyzes the hydrolysis of its substrate, it is a subcategory of hydrolases.

Phosphatase enzymes are essential to many biological functions, because phosphorylation (e.g. by protein kinases) and dephosphorylation (by phosphatases) serve diverse roles in cellular regulation and signaling. Whereas phosphatases remove phosphate groups from molecules, kinases catalyze the transfer of phosphate groups to molecules from ATP. Together, kinases and phosphatases direct a form of post-translational modification that is essential to the cell's regulatory network.

Phosphatase enzymes are not to be confused with phosphorylase enzymes, which catalyze the transfer of a phosphate group from hydrogen phosphate to an acceptor. Due to their prevalence in cellular regulation, phosphatases are an area of interest for pharmaceutical research.

Protease (also called a peptidase or proteinase) is an enzyme that catalyzes (increases the rate of) proteolysis, the breakdown of proteins into smaller polypeptides or single amino acids.

They do this by cleaving the peptide bonds within proteins by hydrolysis, a reaction where water breaks bonds. Proteases are involved in many biological functions, including digestion of ingested proteins, protein catabolism (breakdown of old proteins),and cell signalling.

Without additional helping mechanisms, proteolysis would be very slow, taking hundreds of years. Proteases can be found in all forms of life and viruses. They have independently evolved multiple times, and different classes of protease can perform the same reaction by completely different catalytic mechanisms.

Ureases (EC 3.5.1.5), functionally, belong to the superfamily of amidohydrolases and phosphotriesterases.[2] Ureases are found in numerous bacteria, fungi, algae, plants, and some invertebrates, as well as in soils, as a soil enzyme. They are nickel-containing metalloenzymes of high molecular weight.[3]

These enzymes catalyze the hydrolysis of urea into carbon dioxide and ammonia:

(NH2)2CO + H2O → CO2 + 2NH3
The hydrolysis of urea occurs in two stages. In the first stage, ammonia and carbamate are produced. The carbamate spontaneously and rapidly hydrolyzes to ammonia and carbonic acid. Urease activity increases the pH of its environment as ammonia is produced, which is basic.

Vandenberg