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Inoculating soil with mycorrhizal fungi can increase plant yield: study
- cultofmetatron 3y agoI always said GMO fungus is going to be the next big thing. its going to be wild
- bozhark 3y agoIt’s not. Fungus is well established and documented as-is. No need for genetically modified. Just choose the right ones for the application
- cratermoon 3y ago> No need for genetically modified. Yeah, same could be said for lots of things, but Monsanto can't patent generic fungus, but if they insert a gene to make it die off every year, they can patent it, charge lots of money, re-sell it over and over, and sue anyone who happens to grow some without paying themn.
- randomdata 3y agoCharge lots of money for what?
- cultofmetatron 3y agoone example I can think of fungus that is souped up to be able to liberate phosphate or <insert trace mineral> from the local rocks in the area at higher rates than whats around there.
- cratermoon 3y agoYeah, it would need to have some advantage over the ability of natural mycorrhizal fungi, and improving the uptake and exchange of phosphate and iron might be good, especially for soils where those ions are less mobile, like clays and very basic soils. Just given the realities of climate change, increasing arable land could be a huge bonus for some crops. That would be the good side. The negative side would be along the lines of predatory Monsanto/Bayer seed practices. See <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-organic-lawsuit-idUSBRE9590ZD20130610/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-organic-lawsuit-...>
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoMy limited understanding is that there's some kind of exchange happening within these mycelial networks. The plants trade hexose for phosphates and nitrates, more or less. One hack that might be worth trying is to see if we can can supply another energy source (non food grade sugars) so that the plant doesn't end up "paying" for phosphates and nitrates with nutrients that we'd rather keep for ourselves. Maybe that's as simple as adding compost, but it could be that some tampering is warranted to ensure that the plant gets a free ride and the fungus indeed quests after the nutrients we want it to (verses just taking our bribe and ignoring the plant, which it no longer needs as an energy source).
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoMy application is I want to be able to drill a hole and fill it with food and fungal spores. Later I want to come back and harvest a giant mushroom which will be full of lithium that the mycelium has pulled from the ground and concentrated at the surface. Can you suggest a species for me to use? I know that there are ones that do this, more or less, for arsenic, but I want lithium instead.
- gumby 3y agoJust don’t use Roundup (Glyphosate) which will undo this effort!
- voisin 3y agoJust don’t use Roundup (Glyphosate) FTFY.
- neverkn0wsb357 3y agoOkay, but this has been known for a while hasn’t it? I remember reading a statement like this in “Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms” and that book was published in 1993. Is the reason this is note worthy the % amount calculated by the study?
- voisin 3y agoIt is also written about extensively in The Holistic Orchard.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoYes this has been known for a while. However it is often important to have scientific studies backing well-known information. Well-known information is often wrong, and there are also people who are familiar with the prevalence of the knowledge but are unconvinced or misinformed. In these cases, studies help avoid confusion and advance our collective knowledge. In this case I am sure earlier studies have been done, but I would not write off further exploration just because a topic has been previously studied.
- millzlane 3y agoI think it's the fact that it was applied to a field. "A team of researchers from the universities of Zurich and Basel, Agroscope, and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) has now shown for the first time on a large scale that applying mycorrhizal fungi in the field works. The fungi were mixed into the soil before sowing crops on 800 trial plots at 54 maize farms in northern and eastern Switzerland."
- randomdata 3y agoThe regional maize yield record produced for a growing contests is only 25% higher than we can see from general production without meticulous care for the sake of a contest. Hard to fathom that this is moving the needle by 40%.
- RetroTechie 3y ago
- aidenfoxivey 3y agoIt's a bit silly, but sometimes I have to remind myself that fungi aren't plants.
- distortionfield 3y agoRight? I didn’t know until relatively recently they’re considered a third kingdom: flora, fauna, funga.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoAnimals are more closely related to fungi than we are to plants. Our closest shared ancestors were likely these little guys: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate Source: I took Bio 101 last semester so I'm pretty much an expert now.
- pdonis 3y agoI think protists (like the amoeba) are considered a fourth kingdom within the eukaryotes. But that isn't even the highest level of classification: eukaryotes are only one of three domains of life, the other two being bacteria and archaea. (Eukaryotes are believed to have originated as symbiotic unions of ancestors of archaea and bacteria.)
- hoseja 3y agoIt's more like animals, fungi and plants are weird colonial protists.
- pvaldes 3y agoAnd the fourth kingdom that are neither plants, animals, nor fungus: Protista. The "animalgae"
- confused_boner 3y agoI use it when growing cannabis. Can confirm, noticeable difference in dry yield. (Not sure the exact percent but the title sounds close)
- herbst 3y agoAlso way less prone to catch other mushrooms out of the air.
- colechristensen 3y agoMissing from the headline: >"On a quarter of the plots, the mycorrhizal fungi enabled up to 40% better yields. That's huge," says the study's co-lead, Marcel van der Heijden, a soil ecologist at the University of Zurich and at Asgroscope. But there's a catch: on a third of the plots, the yield did not increase and sometimes even decreased. Considering studies and trials that fail will also fail to get attention there's a problem: a significant uphill battle to getting the relationship right between fungi and crops to actually increase productivity. These are complicated relationships that swing between parasitic and mutually beneficial depending on species, varieties, microclimate, and your favorite shade of blue. It is not at all a case of "add some fungi and everything will be better!", a lot of stuff has to be mechanistically understood and controlled and we're right at the beginning of that.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoSomething I thought was really cool is that in Korean Natural Farming [1] there is a technique where you go to the forest near your farm and gather a bunch of decomposing leaves and other matter from the forest floor, then take it at home and throw it in a tub of I think starchy water to feed the microorganisms in the material you collected. You incubate this for a while and then spread this water over your soil. The motivation for this practice is the idea that your local forest has self-selected to grow well in your particular location, and those bacteria will be very helpful. I think it's an excellent innovation. It is both very simple for poor farmers all over the world to do and based on good scientific principles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_natural_farming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_natural_farming
- westurner 3y agoMycorrhiza in soil help plant roots absorb nutrients. Mycorrhiza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza Leaf mold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_mold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_mold KNF > Indigenous microorganisms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_natural_farming#Indigenous_microorganisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_natural_farming#Indigen... FWIU JWA is very similar to Castille soap? From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171603 : > A (soap-like) surfactant like JADAM Wetting Agent (JWA) which causes the applied treatments to stick to the plants might reduce fertilizer runoff levels; but Nitrogen-based fertilizer alone does not regenerate all of the components of topsoil. https://www.google.com/search?q=jadam+jwa https://www.google.com/search?q=jadam+jwa https://youtube.com/@JADAMORGANIC https://youtube.com/@JADAMORGANIC > Mycorrhizae fungus in the soil help get nutrients to plant roots, and they need to be damp in order to prevent soil from turning to dirt due to solar radiation and oxidation. https://youtube.com/@soilfoodwebschool https://youtube.com/@soilfoodwebschool Yield and Soil Fertility are valuable criteria to optimize for; with multi-criteria optimization. Crop yield: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_yield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_yield Soil fertility > Soil depletion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_fertility#Soil_depletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_fertility#Soil_depletion
- flir 3y agoSame deal with compost tea. Water, rabbit manure (for example), maybe an airstone, time.
- flenserboy 3y agoMy last garden went gangbusters when I introduced this to the soil, especially in the second & third years after starting with it. It was really neat to see (via digging) that it was also invading the lawn around the garden, & that the grass there was clearly healthier than the rest of the lawn. The spores also did great when introduced to the compost pile. Tree/fungus interaction is also interesting. I planted four fruit trees, two near where an old tree had been taken down, and two on the other side of the lawn. Same soil, same watering, but the second two died — the only real difference I could see was a sizable patch of fungus which had been growing around the old tree, & which was still in the lawn near the trees that lived. Next time I plant trees I'm going to add in a bucket of dirt taken from an old-growth patch around the sapling roots & see what difference that might make.
- bequanna 3y agoThe biggest reason I hear from farmers whey they don't switch to organic farming practices is that yields are too unpredictable (and usually much lower) with current organic methods for field crops. So maybe someone smarter than me could chime in: Could we expect similar results with field crops like corn, soybeans, wheat?
- analyte123 3y agoSo they say: https://locusag.com/biologicals/rhizolizer-row-crops/ https://locusag.com/biologicals/rhizolizer-row-crops/
- randomdata 3y ago> yields are too unpredictable (and usually much lower) with current organic methods for field crops. While big yields are fun, at the end of the day all that matters is producing something for consumers that justifies the effort. The yield itself is ultimately immaterial. The trouble is that organic methods don't get you there – at least not without being certified organic, which is its own can of worms. > Could we expect similar results with field crops like corn The article suggests that the study was done specifically on corn (maize).
- andtong 3y agoMasanobu Fukuoka[1] was able to get high yields of rice (top 5% in Japan) while only using natural methods of farming. Also, while other fields were left fallow, he got a crop of barley. So basically double the yields of any other farm. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- analyte123 3y agoSoil microbiome has a large of number of similarities with the human microbiome. It's an overlooked factor that matters a lot to human/plant health. There are many unexplored facets that may overturn conventional understanding of human/plant systems and health. Supplementing the microbiome can help treat human/plant diseases. The microbiome is important for nutrient processing. There's no accepted way to systematically assess the microbiome, let alone any test that can properly identify problems with the human/soil microbiome beyond "something very bad is here that shouldn't be", or "there's almost nothing here when there should be". Interventions are hard to quantify beyond distant effects like yield or reported symptoms.
- vinnyvichy 3y agoFollowing piece of practical layman info was hard to locate in TFA, had to look up Wikipedia instead: "Rhizophagus irregularis (previously known as Glomus intraradices[3][4]) is an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus used as a soil inoculant in agriculture and horticulture. Rhizophagus irregularis is also commonly used in scientific studies of the effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on plant and soil improvement. Until 2001, the species was known and widely marketed as Glomus intraradices, but molecular analysis of ribosomal DNA led to the reclassification of all arbuscular fungi from Zygomycota phylum to the Glomeromycota phylum."
- fuzztester 3y agoCheck out Elaine Ingham's talks on these topics on YouTube, such as The Roots of Your profits: https://youtu.be/x2H60ritjag?si=snrZkCZqrIUAdSa2 https://youtu.be/x2H60ritjag?si=snrZkCZqrIUAdSa2