The more we learn about fungi, the more we understand what an important role they perform in our ag work and the potential they have to deliver more significant positive impacts to the planet, including the agricultural industry.
Case in point: Plant disease is one of the most important causes of crop losses worldwide. Irish botanist Brian Murphy discovered in 2015 that growing little-known fungi called endophytes inside plants helps them defend against disease but doesn’t damage the plants. Plant endophytes do this by enhancing plant growth, stimulating elongation of root hairs, increasing branching of roots, allowing plants access to more nutrients, and stimulating oxidative stress tolerance. Instead of buying seeds coated in an insecticide containing neonicotinoids, for example, farmers could buy seeds containing endophyte spores, which would then make their way inside the crop and bolster its tolerance to drought, insects, and pathogens.
An astounding discovery came after the 1986 Chernobyl accident, when researchers found that some species of fungi actually thrive on radioactive particles. It’s damaging to plant and animal tissues, but these fungi somehow capture uranium like plants capture sunlight and use it to power their metabolism. We’ve known that fungi can be used for cleaning up environmental hazards like oil spills, but uranium is a whole other realm.
And now we’re understanding that fungi might be an answer to our plastic habit gone bad. In 2011, Yale University students found Pestalotiopsis in the rainforests of Ecuador. It’s the first fungus shown to have a voracious appetite for plastic, and it can thrive in oxygen-starved environments like landfills!
Highly productive agricultural soils tend to have ratios of fungal to bacterial biomass near 1:1 or somewhat less. Many different types of soils have been analyzed for this ratio:
- Coniferous forest: 100 to 1,000
- Deciduous forest: 5 to 100
- Weeds and Grasslands: 0.1 to 1
- Agricultural fields 0.1 to 1
Fungi and bacteria are important in agricultural soils because they work as decomposers. They play an integral role in the nutrient cycling process for plants.
Fungi utilize high-carbon substrates, like cellulose and lignin. Fungi excel at taking in and retaining nutrients in the processes of mineralization and immobilization. Bacteria choose high-nitrogen sources for food, like manure.
The more microbial biomass, the healthier the soil, and the more available energy for plant growth. However, bacterial dominance in soils is problematic. The more bacteria that are present in soils, the fewer fungi contribute to the agricultural system. Increasing the populations of fungi in agricultural soils is pivotal to the process of optimizing the production of healthy crops. Fungal-to-bacterial ratios are not a “new” concept but few growers pay enough attention to it.
Andaman Ag sells several fungal-dominant products that can be easily integrated into any current crop program.
