Field guide · Amendments compared
The market splits into four families: mineral amendments, biological inoculants, organic amendments, and hybrids of the first two. Each acts by a different mechanism and on a different timescale. Which one suits a parcel is decided by the soil analysis, not by the category on the bag.
Four families are sold into the same problem, and the mechanism separates them.
Mineral amendments are clays and bentonite, high-CEC minerals such as zeolites, biochar, and lime or gypsum. They change pore-size distribution and raise cation-exchange capacity, so the soil holds more water and more exchangeable cations. They persist, because a mineral does not decompose, but tonnages and haulage decide the operation.
Organic amendments are compost, farmyard manure, crop residues and cover crops. They build organic matter and feed the soil community, and on sand they are the most robust lever on water-holding capacity. Slow, cumulative, and they must be repeated.
Biological inoculants are mycorrhizal and bacterial products, cheap and easy to apply. Establishment is the weak point: a propagule arriving in a degraded soil meets poor pore habitat, resident competition and little moisture, so much of it never colonises.
Synthetic retainers, the superabsorbent polymers sold as hydrogels, act fast and visibly. Performance falls with salinity and repeated wet–dry cycles, and measured duration rarely matches the claims.
Nothing should be bought before the parcel is measured. A soil analysis (texture, organic matter, pH, cation-exchange capacity, water-holding capacity) is the standard first step advisers recommend.
A fertilising product placed on the EU market comes under Regulation (EU) 2019/1009, which sets product function categories, component material categories and labelling requirements. Ask each supplier which category theirs sits in.
Read the table across, not down: a slow family answers a different constraint, not a worse one.
The rows are not exclusive; on sand the good answer usually pairs organic matter with a mineral that raises retention.
| Family | What it does | Time to effect | Persistence | Main caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic amendments | Builds organic matter, feeds soil life | Two to five years | While the practice continues | Must be repeated; slow to show |
| Cover crops and reduced tillage | Living roots, added carbon, protected aggregates | Two to four seasons | While the system is kept | Water used in the intercrop; management burden |
| Clay / bentonite addition | Raises CEC and water retention in sand | One season | Permanent once incorporated | Large tonnages; haulage often decides against it |
| High-CEC minerals and biochar | Porous surface holds water and cations | One season | Persistent; a mineral does not decompose | Quality varies; evidence is site-dependent |
| Mycorrhizal inoculants alone | Adds fungal propagules to the root zone | One season | Only if colonisation establishes | Establishment fails in degraded, dry soil |
| Hydrogels / superabsorbent polymers | Holds free water near the roots | Immediate | Short against the claims made | Falls with salinity and wet–dry cycling |
Hydrobio by KUZOG is the hybrid of the mineral and biological families: a clay-based micronised mineral matrix, specific surface ×200 against the unground mineral, with high cation-exchange capacity, carrying a living mycorrhizal consortium.
An inoculant applied alone into a degraded soil faces poor pore habitat, competition from the resident community and little moisture, so much of it never colonises anything. The mineral matrix arrives as pore space, held moisture and adsorbed nutrient through the future root zone; in return the hyphae bind particles into aggregates, so the structural change survives wetting, drying and tillage. One application lasts three to five years.
The +47% water retention measured on sandy soils comes from controlled trials, to be confirmed in independent field trials.
It is not a fertiliser and carries no guaranteed nutrient content. It will not fix compaction, and on many parcels a well-run organic-matter and cover-crop programme is the right first answer.
It is not generally available yet: the patent application is filed with the USPTO, filed and not granted, with a PCT extension underway. Homologation under EU Regulation 2019/1009 is in preparation, first deployments are underway, and broader French commercialisation is planned from late 2026.
There is no catalogue dose; the composition is set per parcel. What we need is short.
HydrobioFormul turns that into the exact composition, the mineral-matrix and mycorrhiza ratios, the per-parcel dose and a traced formulation sheet. It is supervised machine learning, not generative AI. We publish no rate per hectare: a rate not derived from your analysis is a guess.
Tell us the parcel, the crop and the constraint, and attach a recent soil analysis. We answer within one business day with what the analysis actually points at — including when that is not our product.