Mycorrhizal FungiThe real beauty of these mycorrhizal fungi, as they are called, is more than skin-deep. When they connect with the roots of plants, they can increase the plant's ability to take in water and food by 10 to 1,000 times. They help plants strengthen their immune system. They emit chemicals into the soil to unlock hard-to-extract micronutrients like iron and phosphorus. They produce organic "glues" that make the soil more clumpy and porous, improving its structure and resiliency. " Mycorrhizae"is the word for the tangle of tissue that forms when certain treads specialized soil fungi get together with plant roots. It"s a 400-million-year-old, evolving relationship, one that scientists think made it possible for aquatic plants to keep themselves watered and thus become established on dry land. Mycorrhizae are everywhere in relatively undisturbed soils more than 90 percent of the world's plants form them around or inside the root cells. The more numerous ectomycorrhizal species ("Ecto-" is a prefix meaning "outside") attach themselves to the outsides of root cells of conifers. The other major category, endomycorrhizae, colonize root tissue from inside the cell.. These species associate themselves with nonconiferous plants, such as shrubs, herbs, and grasses, including most the commercially important ornamental and agricultural plants. "Most undisturbed, natural settings don"t lack for mycorrhizae," says
Amaranthus."But disturbed soils, like Amaranthus, is the president and chief scientist of Mycorrhizal Applications Inc., a Grants Pass company that grows, extracts and markets beneficial soil fungi to nurseries, timber companies, landscapers, and organic farmers. These fungi- " on of the little things that run the world," as Amaranthus calls them-offer an alternative to the heavy fertilizer and pesticide use common in intensive plant-rearing methods. |
