Podcast Short: Exploring Endophytes for Healthier Plants with Maizie Koentopp
Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
AEA Marketing
4.7 • 548 Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is the first time we've had a high schooler on the podcast!
Maizie Koentopp, a 9th grader in Chicago, conducted a simple yet elegant experiment on buckwheat plants. Motivated by her father's urban farming work and her own concern about climate change, Maizie wanted to test the effect of endophytic bacteria on plant development as an alternative to harmful agrochemicals. She compared seeds inoculated with AEA's BioCoat Gold™ to a non-inoculated control, and found that inoculated seeds (in both sterilized and non-sterilized soil) grew faster, had higher survival rates, and developed more root hairs.
If others in Maizie's generation share her curiosity, poise, and scientific rigor, then our future is in good hands."
Additional Resources
To read more about her research, click here.
About John Kempf
John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it.
Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology.
Support For This Show & Helping You Grow
Since 2006, AEA has been on a mission to help growers become more resilient, efficient, and profitable with regenerative agriculture.
AEA works directly with growers to apply its unique line of liquid mineral crop nutrition products and biological inoculants. Informed by cutting-edge plant and soil data-gathering techniques, AEA's science-based programs empower farm operations to meet the crop quality markers that matter the most.
AEA has created real and lasting change on millions of acres with its products and data-driven services by working hand-in-hand with growers to produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and higher profits.
Beyond working on the ground with growers, AEA leads in regenerative agriculture media and education, producing and distributing the popular and highly-regarded Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, inspiring webinars, and other educational content that serve as go-to resources for growers worldwide.
Learn more about AEA's regenerative programs and products: https://www.advancingecoag.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, friends. This is John. Welcome back to the regenerative agriculture podcast where we have all kinds of fun conversations related to soil health and plant health. |
| 0:09.7 | And in this, in this fascinating world, as we are learning that plants have brains and they have the ability to think and to make informed decisions. |
| 0:28.7 | They make very conscious, specific, informed decisions about how to interact with their environment, |
| 0:35.5 | how to respond to different stimulus, how to associate and support their microbiome or not. We develop this, we're developing a very different perspective than what we have |
| 0:44.2 | generally collectively held historically on the way that plants interact with their environment |
| 0:50.7 | and the way that they interact with their microbiome. |
| 0:53.0 | And of course, the way we move these boundaries forward is constantly by researching, |
| 0:58.0 | by setting more, trying to understand how interactions are happening. |
| 1:02.0 | And some of these experiments can be very sophisticated, |
| 1:06.0 | but often some of the best discoveries come from the simple experiments or simple observations out in the |
| 1:12.2 | field. So for our conversation today, I'm joined by Maisie Kaintop, who read an experiment that |
| 1:20.7 | caught our team's attention here at AEA. They were delighted by the simplicity of the experiment, the elegance of the experiment, |
| 1:29.3 | and the results that came out of it. |
| 1:30.3 | So, Masey, thank you for being willing to join me today. |
| 1:34.3 | Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and the experiment on what inspired you to run this experiment. |
| 1:40.3 | For the past three years at my middle school, we have been required to do a |
| 1:47.1 | Stanford project every year. And my dad is, he works in like an urban farm and works to promote |
| 1:56.1 | farm and like the like agriculture. He like works in in that area so I have like grown up around |
| 2:04.2 | like always hearing about that in my house and I knew I wanted to explore something similar to that |
| 2:10.6 | and something like a huge problem that I think like impacts a lot of young people is climate change and the impact on the environment |
| 2:19.4 | that humans are having. So I wanted to connect those two areas. So I decided with the help of |
| 2:27.6 | two soil scientists, Dr. Akila Martin and Dr. Israel, that I wanted to research how we could exchange the use of harmful |
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