What's a CHROMA?

AGRECOL (Agribusiness & Ecology), a project of the Foundation for Ecodevelopment, introduces the chroma-method. This method is used to determine the actual overall state of health of a given soil or compost.

Chroma: "a coloured confession"

A chroma is a visualized print of the actual health situation of the soil or a plant.

"The need for analytical methods to sufficiently distinguish between conventionally and ecologically grown foods has been stressed and the lack of such methods results in confusion among food producers, processors and regulators and among consumers dealing with these products" (1)

(1) Biological Agriculture and Horticulture, 1982, Vol. 1, pp 29-38 "Use of a Circular Chromatographic Method for the Distinction of Collard Plants Grown under Different Fertilizing Conditions" by Dietrich Knorr

A chroma can be used to deal with this situation decisively. Although such a chroma method has already been introduced back in the 30'ties (2) it is only recently introduced again inside the European ecological agricultural movement as a means to determine overall health of soil or plant (3).

(2) In 1930 dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer is the first who uses the chroma analytical method on human blood. Back in 1944 he started to use this method for the first time on soil.

(3) Because of the level of expertise needed to apply the method correctly and due to prevealing regular agricultural insights, the chroma method has not yet reached a stage in which its significance is fully reckognized.