An international group of research institutions is studying a form to reproduce what the researchers call Indian Topsoil, which they are fertile lands, found in several points of the Amazon Forest, in an aleatoric way, usually close to the rivers. In these places, during thousands of years the indigenous tribes that lived there buried the whole garbage type used by them – organic and inorganic. A long time then, it was discovered that those places changed in the most fertile soils of the world.

Researchers of the Embrapa Solos, that is part of the study group, explain that the objective is to reproduce these lands in a short interval of time and in way economically viable. They affirm that the Indian Topsoil contains three times more phosphorus and nitrogen – that are the nutrients for the plants – if compared to the common soil that has never received doses fertilizers. Besides that, it can remove the carbon of the atmosphere in a much more effective way than any other soil type (a hectare of Topsoil can store 250 tons of carbon or more, against 100 tons in the close soils).

Green revolution

The specialists believe that, when it becomes possible to reproduce the Indian Topsoil, there will be a second Green Revolution – but this time, in an ecological correct way. “A true vegetable black gold, which we hope to become a passport for the so wanted sustainability of the Tropical Agriculture “, they explain.

Agricultural input

In a parallel way, The Embrapa Solos is also studying other forms of use to the urban and rural waste and it proposes a more nobleman use of this great environmental and public health problem: to transform the Waste in biogas or agricultural inputs. “The Indian Topsoil are fruit of the decomposition of that whole Waste that our old Indians buried “, explains the researcher Etelvino Henrique Novotny, of Embrapa Solos. The name “Topsoil” is due to the high accumulation of coal – or bio-coal as well as it is called -, different from the common soils.

Since the decade of 60, the science is studying use forms and reproducible of the Topsoil. One of the last discoveries of use of the vegetable coal – present in these lands and manufactured in the industry – is as fertilizer and coadjutant in the kidnapping of gases of the green house effect. With the objective of studying those other uses of the vegetable coal the International Biochar Initiative was formed (IBI), to which the researcher Etelvino, was recently-guest to take part, beside representatives of 13 country-members.