Interview with Mycorrhizal Fungi

By Jade Greene

To lead up to our event with Anne Biklé in April, we are exploring what makes healthy soil. One key ingredient is mycorrhizal fungi, a special group of fungi that help plants reach for more nutrients.

BCFA: Everyone always says potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen but there is so much more to healthy soil and therefore healthy plants than just the physical nutrients. If the plants can’t absorb those nutrients, it doesn’t matter how much fertilizers are dumped onto the soil. Healthy plants need a healthy relationship with fungi of all things!

Fungus: Thank you so much for saying that! You humans refer to us as mycorrhizal fungi. We fungi never get any credit for all the work we put in. We are the silent partner for so many plants and crops. 

Why is that?

Well, you can’t see us. We live the majority of our lives under the soil, hidden from human eyes. It’s very hard for you to visualize just how complex and spectacular the eco-system is in healthy soil. From insects breaking down and eating materials and making little tunnels, to microbes and fungi decomposing organic matter to plant roots, there is just so much going on! It’s lovely. You critters are a very visual species so you don’t really think of fungi often, unless we are making a mushroom. Most of the time, we live exclusively in the beautifully dark, moist soil.

Even though you can’t see us, you experience us in everything you eat and most of the plants you see. We mycorrhizal fungi have an essential job: we help extend plants’ roots to grab and absorb more nutrients in the soil. 

Wow, that is amazing! I had no idea! Tell me more about yourself!

Ok, so you all know mushrooms. Many fungi shoot up mushrooms when we are ready to reproduce, mushrooms exist to release spores so we can colonize a new area. We only make mushrooms when we are thriving and the environmental conditions are right. Even without a mushroom, we are always living under the soil. Right now. All the time.

You see, under each mushroom is our real self: a vast network of fungal threads, which you call hyphae and mycelium. Personally, I am a special kind of fungi known as mycorrhizal fungi. We require a plant to survive and plants pretty much require us as well. We attach ourselves to plant roots (or the area around plant roots) and we help our plant friends reach water and nutrients that they could not get on their own. There are other types of fungi that do not live directly with plant roots (decomposers and parasites). [BCFA note, you can read more about different types of fungi here]

So interesting! You are absolutely selfless to help plants!

I probably shouldn’t be saying this but we get something out of this deal too… We can’t make carbon ourselves like the plants do with photosynthesis so we trade for it. I hate to say this too but we will hoard resources when there is a nutrient deficiency so we aren’t all sunshine and rainbows. Afterall, a fungus has to eat too!

It’s only fair that you get something for all the hard work you do. 

We do more than just help plants eat. We help them communicate too. Since our mycelium are connected to multiple plants at once, we connect all the plants in our network. Plants can send messages to each other through our network, sometimes this is referred to as “wood wide web.” For example, when a plant is attacked by a pest insect, that plant releases a compound that attracts a predator wasp of their pest. Fungi can share this compound to other plants that we are connected to and the other connected plants know to produce the compound and are prepared before the pest even arrives.

Beyond our relationship with plants, we are an essential part of the soil ecosystem. We help cycle nutrients and organic matter and create tunnels for air and water to flow through which helps the myriad of critters who call the soil home. Overall, a healthy soil holds on to topsoil and nutrients which prevents harmful runoff from entering water bodies. So our reach goes beyond our plant partners.

This is wild! Thanks for doing that! How can we support you?

Thanks for asking, your plants will thank you too! There are a number of things you can do:

• Don’t till! Excessive tilling can break up my mycelium networks and make it harder for us to thrive
• Add compost and organic matter to your soil, yum yum!
• You can add mycorrhizal fungi spores to your soil to give us a head start
• Rotate crops and use cover crops
• Do not use synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides – they can breakdown my mycelium networks and disrupt nutrient cycles that I depend on

What happens when soil is damaged and there are no mycorrhizal fungi?

Well, plants suffer. Without us, they can’t access as many nutrients and so the plants themselves don’t grow as well, they just can’t absorb as much nutrients into their tissues, and therefore are often less nutrious for people when they eat the plant. Besides helping plants, we fungi also prevent erosion and keep soils fertile so without us, the whole soil ecosystem suffers.

Awful, that sounds dreadful and very problematic.

It is. And unfortunately it is happening in a lot of soils. Conventional farming is killing us. We can’t thrive with all the tilling and synthetic amendments of fertilizers and poisons to control pests so soil health is absolutely suffering. Farms can still produce food but they are completely dependent on machinery and artificial amendments, rather than the natural systems that can work all on their own when supported by regenerative farming practices. Anne Biklé can tell you more in her book What Your Food Ate and at her presentation on 4/9. She’s been such a great supporter of us fungi and regenerative farming.

There are a lot of mycorrhizal fungi living here in Bucks County, thanks to the many incredible regenerative farms that prioritize soil health. You can find them on our local food map. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day helping plants and soil to speak with us!

Thank you so much for having me! Keep thinking about soil and hope to see you in your garden and at the event on 4/9!

Thanks again. Reader, if you are interested in learning more from Anne Biklé, you can get information and tickets here! 

Sources:

• Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change our Minds & Shape our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake (2020)
• What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health by David Montgomery and Anne Biklé (2022)