These are Prof. Teruo Higa’s words when seeing his theory succeed after various unsuccessful trials.
“In the 80s, after years of unsuccessful trials, I managed to select and make coexist several strains of microorganisms that, in science’s eyes, shouldn’t have been able to live together since they had antagonist processes.” Thanks to these findings, Higa concluded that in a healthy soil many populations of microorganisms with antagonist processes are not only present at the same time but also seem to co-exist.
Initially, Prof. Higa tried, like a proper researcher would do, to repeat the same experiments (different populations of microorganisms co-existing together) in vitro instead of soil but all trials were unsuccessful.