The evidence
For decades, the volcanic-mineral solution behind Primora Bio has been tested across crops, soil, water and aquaculture. Wherever it was measured, the reported change pointed the same way. Here is all of it, with the limits printed next to the findings.
How to read this
That is the shape of it. Much of this record is historical, observational, single-operator or preliminary, and has not been replicated under modern controlled conditions. Every figure below carries its provenance and an evidence grade, and every one carries what it cannot support.
Grade I
Controlled experimental or peer-reviewed study. The only entries that can carry a causal reading.
Grade II
Institutional or structured treatment-versus-control study, without peer review.
Grade III
Comparative field observation or longitudinal field measurement. Real operations, no assigned control.
Grade IV
Cultivation, demonstration or operational field report carrying a numerical outcome.
Grade V
Technical bulletin, application guide, product characterization or qualitative report.
The whole picture
The strongest reported finding from each independently measured system, with what was measured and its evidence grade.
Yield & quality
Across seven crops in field trials, reported yields rose by roughly 15–38% against untreated controls — with quality gains reported alongside.
What it cannot support. No randomization, no blinding, and reporting bias that cannot be quantified. The bars show a reported range, not a measured mean with error.
Sweetness & market value
Reported soluble-solids measurements moved fruit from ordinary commercial quality toward premium ranges — value beyond yield alone.
What it cannot support. The comparison baselines are published commercial ranges, not paired untreated fruit grown alongside.
Photosynthesis
In controlled dose-response testing, photosynthetic activity rose to about +40% at low-to-moderate concentrations, then declined at higher ones — a rise, plateau and fall pattern more consistent with catalytic conditioning than with nutrient replacement.
What it cannot support. A laboratory measure of electron transport is not a field yield, and it cannot tell you the optimum for your soil and water. One report, never independently replicated.
Aquaculture
In a commercial eel operation, mineral-conditioned water was associated with reaching market size in roughly half the usual time, denser stocking and a higher selling price — while dissolved oxygen and water quality held up under heavier feeding.
What it cannot support. A working commercial pond, not an experiment. These particular density and premium figures come from the inventor watching his own tanks; the independent Hamamatsu operator reported the growth and water-quality result, not these.
Nutrient retention
In a 100-acre commercial citrus grove, leaf-tissue analyses showed key nutrients maintained at or above optimal levels late in the growing season — the point at which they normally decline.
What it cannot support. No untreated control. The comparison is the historical seasonal trend for the same orchard, so ordinary year-to-year variation is not excluded.
Specialty crops · cannabis
In a 13.5-week greenhouse trial, soil pre-treatment was associated with lower pesticide accumulation in plant tissue and higher cannabinoid and terpene content.
What it cannot support. Not blinded and not randomized, and preliminary by its own title. The mold observation was not a controlled variable — it is something the growers noticed, not something the study set out to measure.
Every study cited
Every study the figures above draw on, sorted by how much weight it can carry. Each entry states its design, what it reported, what it cannot support, and a link to the document itself.
Grade I
Studies with a control, a dose series, or external peer review. These are the only entries that can carry a causal reading, and even then within their own narrow scope.
RW-1
Taiwan · 2008
Design
Tartary buckwheat seeds germinated in sandy soil under controlled incubator conditions and sprayed every four hours with either deionized water or the trace-element water at 100–500 ppm, pH adjusted before use. Strongest response at 300 ppm.
Reported
Iron +58%, zinc +32%, copper +21% in sprout tissue, with measurably improved antioxidant behavior. The sprout extract went on to affect human liver cells.
Cannot support
One plant, one cell line, one set of assays. It is a mechanistic redox study, not an agronomic one. It is the single point in the record where a mineral-environment change carried into human tissue — which makes it interesting, not conclusive.
Citation
Cheng-Kuang Hsu et al., Food Chemistry 108 (2008): 633–41. doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2007.11.028
Grade II
Work designed and documented by an institution — a university engineering faculty, a UN-assisted project, an accredited laboratory — with controls or a dose series, but without peer review.
AG-1
UNAM, Mexico City · 1995
Design
Controlled dose-response series across a concentration range, run at the Instituto de Ingeniería of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México under Project 3306-3, for Shimanishi Kaken.
Reported
Photosynthetic electron transport up to 40% higher. Response rose, plateaued, then fell at excessive concentration — the curve that separates a catalyst from a nutrient.
Cannot support
A laboratory measure of electron transport is not a field yield, and it cannot tell you the optimum for your soil and water. One report, never independently replicated.
Citation
R. Briones and Kuppusamy Ilangovan, Project No. 3306-3, technical report, Instituto de Ingeniería, UNAM, 28 February 1995 · OSF
WW-1
UNAM, Mexico City · 1992
Design
Technical Report 2311-1, Instituto de Ingeniería, UNAM. Four named investigators, including Adalberto Noyola.
Reported
Suspended matter bound and dropped out of solution; dissolved organics broke down. Produced the same rise-plateau-fall dose behavior later seen in photosynthesis — in a completely unrelated system.
Cannot support
Wastewater is not soil. Its value here is mechanistic: it is where the catalytic dose curve was first documented, three years before the photosynthesis work found the same shape.
Citation
K. Ilangovan, R. Briones, J. Vite and A. Noyola, Technical Report 2311-1, Project 2311, Instituto de Ingeniería, UNAM, 21 May 1992 · OSF
KR-1
Korea · 2000
Design
A pilot inside a UNDP-assisted project directed by Kwi-Gon Kim at Seoul National University, with treatment and control plots. Salt-damaged coastal tideland — degraded ground rather than healthy ground, which is the harder test.
Reported
Rice paddy and ecosystem measures favoring treated plots. The most methodologically solid agricultural item in the file.
Cannot support
It does not make this “United Nations validated.” Being studied inside an institutional project is not being endorsed by that institution. We have seen it described that way; it is not, and we do not claim it.
Citation
“Mineral 22 Pilot Project,” in An ESSD Model of the Rural Farmland and Agricultural Resources in Taeho Agricultural Tideland: Final Report, UNDP-Assisted Project ROK/98/006, dir. Kwi-Gon Kim (UNDP and Seoul National University, March 2000), 257–68 · OSF
EL 14-16
Envirotek Laboratories, New Jersey · 2014
Design
Tap water spiked with MCHM to 135 µg/L, treated and filtered at 12, 24 and 48 hours against a control on the same water and the same filter with no mineral solution. EPA method 525. Commissioned by Adya, Inc., which sold this chemistry as Adya Clarity.
Reported
Treated water held eleven times less MCHM at 48 hours — under 0.1 µg/L against 1.1 — with fewer chlorine by-products.
Cannot support
One run, no replicates. Filtration alone removes a great deal of MCHM given two days; the result is the gap between the columns, not the headline percentage.
Citation
Envirotek Laboratories, Inc., Report 14-16, 5 March 2014, for Adya, Inc.
Grade III
Real operations and real laboratory measurement, compared against a prior season, a neighboring field or a historical trend rather than an assigned control.
AG-4
California · 2022
Design
Eleven weeks of foliar application in one navel orange orchard at a tenfold dilution, with leaf tissue analyzed before and after by an independent agricultural laboratory.
Reported
Iron up nearly 150%, copper 80%, boron 70%, calcium, sulfur and magnesium each 40–60%. Seven of twelve measured nutrients moved into their optimal ranges.
Cannot support
No untreated control. The comparison is the same trees months earlier, so ordinary seasonal variation is not excluded. This is why it does not sit among the headline figures.
Citation
Patrick Rascon, Citrus Grove Field Study: Volcanna Rain Mineral Water, leaf-tissue analysis by Precision Agri Lab, 2022 · OSF
AG-6
Greenhouse · 2023
Design
Measurement of pesticide residue accumulating inside plant tissue under treatment.
Reported
Accumulation fell roughly 50% on average, and 75–85% in the strongest cases.
Cannot support
Preliminary by its own title, unreplicated, one crop. It is a single report.
Citation
Drops of Balance LLC, 2023 · OSF
Grade IV–V
Cultivation reports and technical bulletins: working growers and cooperatives recording what they saw from the late 1970s onward, collected in a Japanese technical volume, together with the manufacturer’s own product literature. The bulk of the record by volume and the weakest by design. We publish it because it is what exists, and because it was recorded by people who had no contact with one another.
RW-2 – RW-22
Japan · 1970s–1990s
Design
Grower and cooperative records across six crops over roughly two decades, collected and edited in Japan. Mostly single-operator. Includes the Wakayama Prefecture comparison of 1993, in which treated paddies were set against neighboring untreated fields through one of the worst rice seasons in modern Japanese history.
Reported
Yield increases of 15–38%. At Wakayama, about 25% higher yield under identical weather — roughly 6.0 tonnes per hectare against 4.8. Productive structures — ears, tillers, panicles — up 16–27%, with immature yield components down about 30%.
Cannot support
No randomization, no blinding, and reporting bias that cannot be quantified. Neighboring fields are not assigned plots. A result from one crop in one setting may not carry to another.
Citation
Water Design Research Association, ed., “Miraculous Water” Rock Water: Everything About Themarox — Manufacturing, Properties, and Applications, Masaharu Kubota, rep. ed., unpublished English translation (Tokyo: Gijutsu Shuppan, 2003; first published 1997) · OSF
AQ-2 – AQ-7
Hamamatsu and elsewhere, Japan · 1990 onward
Design
A commercial eel operation at Hamamatsu run by Sakai Ichirō, May–August 1990: two 250-tonne ponds, roughly 25,000 and 32,000 eels, treated at about 0.1%. Plus a wider set of hatchery and marine reports.
Reported
Shipment brought forward from mid-August to the second. Feed intake up; dissolved oxygen and water quality improving under heavier feeding. Across the wider reports: higher stocking density, improved survival, higher market value, reduced antibiotic dependence.
Cannot support
Working commercial ponds, not experiments. The most striking density and premium-price figures come from Shimanishi’s own nursery rather than an independent operator, and we keep those separate.
Citation
Operator records and technical review, in Rock Water as above · OSF
Reference
Not evidence that anything works. Here so the file is complete and so every figure we publish can be traced to a document.
COA-1
Midwest Laboratories · 16 October 2025
Design
Elemental analysis of the finished drinking-water product.
Reported
The retail panel behind four of the twenty-nine measured elements, and the reconciliation against the mother solution.
Citation
Midwest Laboratories, Certificate of Analysis, 16 October 2025 · OSF
COA-2
Clearize Co., Ltd. · 30 July 2025
Design
Thirty analytes by ICP-AES, with potassium and sodium by atomic absorption. Commissioned by Shimanishi Kaken.
Reported
Twenty-five elements quantified. Independently confirms the iron and total sulfur figures published in the book.
Citation
Clearize Co., Ltd., report RC202502824 · published in full on the technical specifications page
ICP-14
TestAmerica Sacramento · 8 July 2014
Design
Twenty-eight metals by EPA method 6020 (ICP-MS) on three water samples collected on consecutive days — 28, 29 and 30 June 2014 — through a treat-and-filter cycle. Commissioned through Soil Water Air Protection Enterprise, attention Dr. Paul Rosenfeld.
Reported
Arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, lead, selenium, silver and thallium not detected in the treated water, at method detection limits as low as 0.0001 mg/L. The mineral fingerprint behaves as the mechanism predicts: aluminum, iron, manganese and titanium appear in the treated sample and fall away after filtration — aluminum 0.30 to 0.039 mg/L, iron 0.30 to below detection.
Cannot support
This is dilute treated water, not an assay of the concentrate, so it adds nothing to the element count. Two analytes not otherwise on our list — antimony and tin — are flagged by the laboratory as blank contamination and estimated below the reporting limit, so we do not count them. Three samples, one run.
Citation
TestAmerica Laboratories, Inc., Job No. 320-8220-1, 8 July 2014 · OSF
REG
Japan
Design
Product technical bulletin identifying Japanese MAFF registration no. 85757.
Reported
The material has held a Japanese agricultural registration. A registration is a regulatory permission, not a finding of efficacy.
Citation
Themarox® Liquid Fertiliser: Applicable in Both Irrigation and Foliage Spray, technical bulletin, n.d. · OSF
Adjacent
Included because leaving it out would be selective, flagged because it is not our chemistry.
KW
Japan
Design
A different mineral extract, from different rock, by a different method.
Reported
Soil microbial counts up, hardpan collapse, greater root depth, falling conductivity and nitrate.
Cannot support
It is not our chemistry and its results are not ours to claim. It points the same way from an independent hand — that is all we take from it.
Citation
Third-party publications
The archive
A summary you cannot check is a claim. The underlying documents — UNAM technical reports, the UNDP project chapter, the Japanese field volume in translation, the laboratory certificates — are deposited on the Open Science Framework, and every entry above links to its own record.
01
Each entry links to the file itself, so our description of it can be checked against it.
02
So a reader who works in Japanese, Korean or Spanish can check the translation rather than trust it.
03
The fertilizer-reduction trial is the study we would fund first. When it runs, the protocol goes up before the data does.
osf.io/3u78p · Anything not yet deposited, ask us and we will send it.
Not on this page
Outstanding
Field photos
A potato in a glass. Two lilac bushes a few inches apart. A lawn that came in twice as fast as the bag said. A Christmas cactus that had not flowered in fifty years. Photographs and accounts from the people who sent them.
Across every system that was measured, the reported change pointed the same way: treated systems moved toward greater biological function, not less. Read it and decide for yourself.
