Podcasts about mycorrhizal

A week ago I noticed one of those beautiful red toadstools in our garden – the classic red fungus with white dots all over the skin. Amanita muscaria or Fly agaric – there are a few different sub-species with different colourations (orange-red to yellow, and various colours of the “dots”). This is a Mycorrhizal fungus that is associated with a few common host trees: Birch, beech and pine trees. It's not very edible – in fact, it's better not to muck around with. Some young children have ended up being poisoned and some rather risky adults (trying to go on a Hallucinogenic journey) ended up in similar troubles. But they look great, and this was the first time I saw this species in our front garden, which surprised me. Of course, I never saw the 7-meter tall Betula which really need pruning away from electricity wires… Many species are doing a great job in recycling dead materials, fallen leaves, and dead branches, and also dead trunks in all shapes and sizes. These are some examples of fungi doing the recycling job in forests – small and large and colourful. Ear Fungus is often found on dead trunks of trees. This is a weird looking, feeling, and tasting mushroom that can hardly be misidentified: It looks like a human ear, it feels like an ear, and it even tastes like an ear! This edible fungus was the very first export article that was sent from New Zealand to China in the eighteen hundreds. The Chew Chong brothers in Taranaki were the first people to send container loads of these fungi by ship. Gardeners will encounter fungi that cause all sorts of problems in fruit (fruit rots), in roots (Phytophthora), and in stems and on leaves. Often preventative gardening will reduce the problems developing. Copper sprays tend to protect a plant from Spores settling on the developing fruit. Brown Rot on Apricot What I love to see is interaction between fungi and insects. Here is a stinkhorn fungus with a decent amount of smelly, brown liquid. Flies are keen to harvest that brown stinky stuff and in doing so, they get the brown spores on their body. Those spores are distributed through gardens and forests. Autumn is the time to go for a walk and just look at fungi; I reckon they actually run this planet! LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Matt Powers is a permaculture and soil health educator who began to explore organic and regenerative food systems after his wife's cancer was diagnosed with cancer. He has written 24+ books, created courses, and taught thousands of people about the links between soil biology, plant health, and human well-being. With a background in music and education, Matt shifted to regenerative agriculture by gathering expert knowledge and conducting research. He has developed new microscopy techniques, debunked soil health myths, and helped farmers better understand microbiomes for sustainable agriculture. In this episode, John and Matt discuss:  The essential role of soil microbes in plant nutrition and human health How advanced microscopy techniques help verify soil biology, allowing farmers to make informed decisions about microbial inoculants and soil amendments Common misconceptions about composting and fertilizers that lead to poor soil health Mycorrhizal fungi and how they naturally enhance soil structure, plant growth, and drought resistance The ability of nematodes and other microbes to change their function and morphology in response to environmental conditions The connection between mindset, emotional health, and the gut microbiome, and how beliefs can influence overall well-being Additional Resources To learn more about Matt Powers and his work with the Permaculture Student and other resources, please visit: https://www.thepermaculturestudent.com/ To check out more of Matt's videos, please visit his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Jg0zsgjNxjltlFjE0YvNw About John Kempf John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it. Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology. Support For This Show & Helping You Grow Since 2006, AEA has been on a mission to help growers become more resilient, efficient, and profitable with regenerative agriculture.  AEA works directly with growers to apply its unique line of liquid mineral crop nutrition products and biological inoculants. Informed by cutting-edge plant and soil data-gathering techniques, AEA's science-based programs empower farm operations to meet the crop quality markers that matter the most. AEA has created real and lasting change on millions of acres with its products and data-driven services by working hand-in-hand with growers to produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and higher profits. Beyond working on the ground with growers, AEA leads in regenerative agriculture media and education, producing and distributing the popular and highly-regarded Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, inspiring webinars, and other educational content that serve as go-to resources for growers worldwide. Learn more about AEA's regenerative programs and products: https://www.advancingecoag.com

In this episode I interview Matt Powers. He has been gardening for 16 years and is an Author, Educator, and Citizen Scientist. He has advanced knowledge when it comes to gardening and that's what we are going to dig into today. We get into a variety of topics such as pH, Redox Potential, Mycorrhizal fungi, mushroom blocks, the 24-hour light cycle, and more.Support the show

Tim ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/timnuss/ ) and Tyler ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-nuss/ ) talk to Andrew Duff ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-duff-um-reb2000/ ) about the biological space, why mycorrhizal fungi matters, and why Groundwork BioAg was an early believer in AgList. — This episode is presented by MyLand. Learn more HERE. — Links Groundwork BioAg - https://groundworkbioag.com  Groundwork BioAg on AgList - https://aglist.com/manufacturer/groundwork-bioag AgList: Yelp for Biologicals - https://aglist.com World AgriTech - https://worldagritechusa.com/program/ 

Imran Mahmood discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Imran Mahmood is a criminal defence barrister with over thirty years' experience. His debut novel You Don't Know Me was longlisted for both the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA Gold Dagger in 2017, and selected by Simon Mayo as a BBC Radio 2 Book Club choice in the same year. It was then adapted into a four-part BBC crime drama, airing on a prime-time BBC One slot in 2021, before being released internationally on Netflix the following year and becoming one of the platform's most streamed shows. His second novel, I Know What I Saw (2022) was named a Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Month and reached No. 2 on the Audible charts. Mahmood has written three screenplays and is a regular contributor to the Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast. His new novel is Finding Sophie, which is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/finding-sophie/imran-mahmood/9781526647566 Sentencing for Crimes https://www.sentencingacademy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Mandatory-Minimum-Sentences-Explainer.pdf The Deep and Lasting Power of Books https://medium.com/@ariszavitsanos/the-enduring-power-of-literature-why-it-matters-now-more-than-ever-42900c18e7b The Quran https://www.nybooks.com/online/2017/02/09/crafting-the-koran/ Manipulation by Politicians and Social Media Algorithms https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-01-13-social-media-manipulation-political-actors-industrial-scale-problem-oxford-report Mycorrhizal Networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network Turritopsis dohrnii https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-features/everlasting-life-the-immortal-jellyfish This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

Fungi represent an entire kingdom of life on Earth. In fact, millions of species of fungi share our space on this planet. And since soil contains more than three times as much carbon as the atmosphere, what fungi do in the soil could dramatically affect climate change. One group of fungi in particular - the mycorrhizal fungi - are quietly, but surely, doing us a huge climate favour behind-the-scenes, or in their case, underground. These fungi help forests absorb CO2 pollution, which can in turn contribute to delaying the effects of climate change. But, how has the effects of climate change impacted mycorrhizal fungi and can such fungi be restored in degraded parts of forests and cities? On this episode of Climate Connections, Jennifer Bhatnagar, Associate Professor of Biology at Boston University, who has been studying fungi, shares her insights. Feature produced and edited by: Yeo Kai Ting (ykaiting@sph.com.sg)Voiced by: Emaad AkhtarPhoto credits: CID Bio-ScienceMusic credits: pixabay & its talented community of contributorsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are a lot of biological products on the market. But they run the gamut in terms of their efficacy and consistency.

Welcome to episode 20 of Growers Daily! We cover: Putting the Beds To Rest for Winter + Are we wrong about Mycorrhizal fungi, Also AI is screwing with farmers.  Cover crop playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6-IYSxbbuE&list=PLGMgkMLKOtWu2VFfX46liznymtIz1o69p Spinach Study:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667064X23000726 2023 study on brassicas https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10698685/ Paper on non-host plants https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468265921000810?via%3Dihub#bib26 Broccoli and Mycorrhizae https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667064X24000691 Radish and Mycorrhizae  https://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1000&context=hcir2014#:~:text=Mycorrhizae%20are%20fungi%20that%20have,later%20in%20the%20growing%20season.   Support our work (

In this edition of DIG IT, Peter Brown turns the microphone around and chats with Chris Day about his life and times working with plants, garden centres, radio, people in horticulture, and even a few greenhouses! From a humble apprentice at Rochfords to plant publicity manager at Buckingham Garden Centre, Chris spills the beans on some of his gardening wisdom along the way. Plant mentions: Aloe Vera, Aspidistra, Basil, Beloperone guttata (shrimp or prawn plant!), Cymbidiums, Sweet peas, lawn turf, Kentia palms, Melon, Pineapple, Tomato, Cucumber, Snake plant, Mother-in-Laws (Sansevieria), African Violets (Saintpaulia), Poinsettias, Phalaenopsis (Moth Orchid), Universal Winter Pansies from Colegraves, Cacti, Money plants (Crassula), Chloropytum, Venus Fly Traps and Yuccas. Floral Flame for the Manchester Olympic bid at Manchester Airport created with Begonias, Lobelia, Marigold, Parsley, Perilla, and Impatien). Product mentions: Greenhouse: Corrugated plastic, aluminium (glass to ground), Wooden greenhouse, staging, Victorian style. Paraffin heaters, thermostatically electric fan heater, Garland propagating products, LED grow lights, roller benches, red spider mite pests, pH soil tests and soil science. Wool pots and Mycorrhizal products (RootGrow). People and Place mentions: Amateur Gardening magazine, Alan Beswick, BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Three Counties Radio, Blue Peter Garden, Alan Down, Bridgemere Garden World, RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Dutch Flower Auctions at Aalsmeer, Graham Clarke, Fred Downham, Rochford Houseplants (commercial growers), Garden Centre Association, Guernsey Flower Show, Horticulture Week, Peter Seabrook, Louise Lear, Peat Free UK houseplant growers, Val Bourne, Myerscough College and Writtle College. Hotbeds, created with strawy manure, and John Innes Compost No3. Chris's Desert Island luxuries: Felco secateurs and Potato ‘Home Guard' Chris's book co-authored with Rob Keenan Amateur Gardening Complete Gardening Answers (published by Robinsons). Catch Chris's online Garden Centre postings on Facebook and Instagram Our thanks to Chiltern Music Therapy for supplying the music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Watch and listen to more on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@InSearchofSoil Exploring the Fascinating World of Fungi with Dr. Elizabeth Koziol:  From Dumb Luck to Mycorrhizal Wisdom Elizabeth is a mycologist whose accidental journey into the world of fungi turned into a lifelong passion. She shares her experiences from her career working with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, debunking common misconceptions and explaining the intricate relationships between fungi and plants. Learn about the surprising mechanisms of fungal-plant communication, the role of fungi in agriculture, and the potential of microbial inoculants like MycoBloom. Whether you're a gardener or a researcher, this talk offers valuable insights into the unseen world beneath our feet.  Dr. Kozoil's research: https://scholar.google.com/citations?... Dr. Kozoil's company MycoBloom: https://www.mycobloom.com/ Subscribe and Listen to the audio version of In Search of Soil: iTunes - http://bit.ly/soilpodcast Spotify - http://bit.ly/insearchofsoil Enjoy the show? Drop me a line @diegofooter -   / diegofooter  

Beneficial fungi can now be purchased as a product to help plant roots access more nutrients.

GUEST:   https://www.instagram.com/chefmollie/   https://www.instagram.com/thekindsage/   https://www.instagram.com/sovereigntyranch/   MENTIONS:   https://regenified.com/   https://www.dreamingofavetterworld.com/   https://whiteoakpastures.com/pages/our-team   MUSHROOM HOUR:   https://welcometomushroomhour.com    https://instagram.com/welcome_to_mushroom_hour   https://tiktok.com/@welcome_to_mushroom_hour   Show Music courtesy of the one and only Chris Peck: https://peckthetowncrier.bandcamp.com/   TOPICS COVERED:   Finding Hope in Soil   Culinary Evolution   Becoming a Regenerative Farmer   Misaligned Incentives – Subsidies & Regulations   Barriers to Becoming a Farmer   Farmers as Protagonists   What are “Regenerative Farming” Practices?   Humans as a Keystone Species   Industrial Microbiome   Mycorrhizal Relationships with Corn?   On-Farm and Off-Farm Soil Fertility    Viability of Vegan Farm Systems   Connection Between Our Gut Microbiology and Mental Health   Explosive Blowback from Changing a Vegan Restaurant   

Dr. Ben Sikes, Associate Professor of Microbial Ecology at the University of Kansas, joins us to shed light on the fascinating relationships between fungi and fire. Learn of the interconnection between plants created by mycorrhizal networks (AKA the “wood wide web”), how fire regimes drive changes in fungal communities, the mechanisms of carrying out fungal research, and much more.   Bond, W. J., & Keeley, J. E. (2005). Fire as a global ‘herbivore': the ecology and evolution of flammable ecosystems. Trends in ecology & evolution, 20(7), 387-394. Hopkins, J. R., et al. (2021). Fungal community structure and seasonal trajectories respond similarly to fire across pyrophilic ecosystems. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 97(1), fiaa219. Hopkins, J. R., et al. (2020). Frequent fire slows microbial decomposition of newly deposited fine fuels in a pyrophilic ecosystem. Oecologia, 193, 631-643. Hansen, P. M., et al. (2019). Recurrent fires do not affect the abundance of soil fungi in a frequently burned pine savanna. Fungal ecology, 42, 100852. Fox, S., et al. (2022). Fire as a driver of fungal diversity—A synthesis of current knowledge. Mycologia, 114(2), 215-241. Dao, V. Q., et al. (2022). Substrate and low intensity fires influence bacterial communities in longleaf pine savanna. Scientific reports, 12(1), 20904. Dr. Ben Sikes Contact/Website, Academic Profile Dr. Carolina Baruzzi wildlandmgmt, Academic Profile Dr. Marcus Lashley DrDisturbance, Academic Profile   Have suggestions for future episodes? Send us your feedback! (here) Check out our newest podcast, Wild Turkey Science! Enroll now in our free, online fire course. Available to all. This podcast is supported by listener donations - thank you for being a part of this effort. For more information, follow UF DEER Lab on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.   Music by Dr. David Mason and Artlist.io Produced and edited by Charlotte Nowak  

Dr. Ben Sikes, Associate Professor of Microbial Ecology at the University of Kansas, joins us to shed light on the fascinating relationships between fungi and fire. Learn of the interconnection between plants created by mycorrhizal networks (AKA the “wood wide web”), how fire regimes drive changes in fungal communities, the mechanisms of carrying out fungal research, and much more.   Bond, W. J., & Keeley, J. E. (2005). Fire as a global ‘herbivore': the ecology and evolution of flammable ecosystems. Trends in ecology & evolution, 20(7), 387-394. Hopkins, J. R., et al. (2021). Fungal community structure and seasonal trajectories respond similarly to fire across pyrophilic ecosystems. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 97(1), fiaa219. Hopkins, J. R., et al. (2020). Frequent fire slows microbial decomposition of newly deposited fine fuels in a pyrophilic ecosystem. Oecologia, 193, 631-643. Hansen, P. M., et al. (2019). Recurrent fires do not affect the abundance of soil fungi in a frequently burned pine savanna. Fungal ecology, 42, 100852. Fox, S., et al. (2022). Fire as a driver of fungal diversity—A synthesis of current knowledge. Mycologia, 114(2), 215-241. Dao, V. Q., et al. (2022). Substrate and low intensity fires influence bacterial communities in longleaf pine savanna. Scientific reports, 12(1), 20904. Dr. Ben Sikes Contact/Website, Academic Profile Dr. Carolina Baruzzi wildlandmgmt, Academic Profile Dr. Marcus Lashley DrDisturbance, Academic Profile   Have suggestions for future episodes? Send us your feedback! (here) Check out our newest podcast, Wild Turkey Science! Enroll now in our free, online fire course. Available to all. This podcast is supported by listener donations - thank you for being a part of this effort. For more information, follow UF DEER Lab on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.   Music by Dr. David Mason and Artlist.io Produced and edited by Charlotte Nowak  

Officer Terrance Jacobs is first on the scene of a starship crash on the outskirts of Io. Enjoy the show? Share us on social media! @gravestonecrew everywhere. Or support us on our Patreon! www.patreon.com/gravestonecrewListen on Apollo+ Additional sound design provided by Zapsplat.com

Support Midgard Musings By Clicking Here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/MidgardMusings⁠⁠⁠⁠ Fjallvaettir Workshop: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fjallvaettir.com/ Leif is a Heathen living on the big island of Kona, Hawaii and he is currently working on a model of seeing the mycorrhizal network as the web of Wyrd that connects us to Yggdrasil. You can connect with him by finding his social media links/handles below: Discord: Leif_on_the_wind YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@leifonthewind7232 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monsieur_roustabout_/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/midgardmusings/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/midgardmusings/support

Biologist Dr. Toby Kiers believes there is a lot of potential in studying how to make the most of plant-fungi interactions.

Today we are joined by Marcel van der Heijden who recently just co led a paper demonstrated how mycorrhizal fungi can increase crop yields up to 40%. In an age of modern chemical abundant agriculture destroying our soil and poisoning our food supply, it's of the upmost importance to ally with nature's best tools to feed our planet.  Sign up for our podcast giveaway here. Our next winner will be selected on February 26, 2023 and contacted via email.www.mushroomrevival.comWe are a functional mushroom company and make 100% certified USDA Organic and Vegan mushroom supplements. We are transparent with our lab results, and use actual fruiting bodies aka mushrooms! We provide our supplements in tincture, capsule, powder, and delicious gummy form. Energy (Cordyceps): Need a little pick-me-up before a workout or when you're picking up your kids from school? The Energy Cordyceps is the mushy match for you.Focus (Lion's Mane):  Needing a little more focus in your daily life? Lion's Mane is known to be the mushroom for the brain and may support cognitive function.Calm (Reishi): Looking for some tranquility and zen in your life? Reishi will bring you into the zen state of mind you've been searching for.Daily 10 (Mushroom Mix): It's like having 10 bodyguard mushrooms fighting off all those bad guys. This is a good place to start as it contains all of the daily mushies you need. Not sure where to begin? Take our mushroom quiz here.Use code ‘PODTREAT' for a 30% discount.

Here's a tiny fraction of the info available about why I use mycorrhizal inoculant in soil!

Turn your data into actionable value with SWAT MAPS: https://swatmaps.com/Toby Kiers, PhD website: https://tobykiers.com/Toby's TED TALK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjwvaF3P_5Q&t=273sScientists are discovering incredible interactions between plants' roots and soil dwelling fungi called mycorrhizal fungi. These relationships are integral to how plants function, including of course, our crops. But despite their importance to fundamental aspects of plant development, there's still so much we have yet to learn."We know, for example, that the fungi, when it colonizes the root system, it can actually change the gene regulation of the plant, such that the plant is no longer able to access nutrients directly from its root system. It kind of creates an addiction onto the fungi that makes it so the plant is giving more carbon to get at the nutrients."That's Dr. Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist who studies these mycorrhizal fungi. She shares why this work is so important for biodiversity, for crop development, for soil health and for carbon sequestration. "We did some research that found that about 13 billion tons of CO2 are allocated every year from plants to mycorrhizal networks across the earth, so that that includes all kinds of mycorrhizal fungi, also associated with forests. But that's a huge number, right? That's equivalent to one third of the emissions from fossil fuels."The functions and strategies that these fungi perform in nature will blow your mind, and I can't help but wonder about the possibilities for the future of agriculture. Professor Toby Kiers is an evolutionary biologist who earned her PhD from UC Davis. She has been Professor and University Research Chair of Evolutionary Biology at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam since 2014. Kiers is famous for uncovering ancient biological markets that take place beneath forest floors, in which different trees and fungi barter for essential resources such as phosphorus and sugar. Kiers co-founded the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN).

This week Jeff and Jonathan discuss a new scientific study that looks into how adding mycorrhizal fungai to certain types of farmland can increase the yield by more than 40 percent!Later, the team discusses how redwood trees reproduce, highlighting the fact that scientists have found buds that extend back 1,000 years.Finally, Jeff shares how a certain photo inspired his interest in the soil food web, and how it led to his first book, Teaming With Microbes.All that and more in this week's episode of Teaming With Microbes!**********************************************Have a question? Let us know at teamingwithmicrobes@me.comPlant a row for the hungry/Read Teaming With Microbes, Teaming With Nutrients and Teaming With Fungi!Thanks to our sponsors:Big Foot MicrobesNumber 2 Organics made in partnership with Malibu CompostDown To Earth All Natural Fertilizers The Teaming with Microbes Podcast is edited and produced with original music by Pod Peak.  Special thanks to the Anchorage Daily News for hosting the show!

There’s a possible yield benefit for peas following wheat in a crop rotation rather than canola, according to research done through the University of Manitoba.. This Pulse School episode features Brodie Erb, MSc student and field technician at the U of M, who has spent the past three years looking at how preceding crop, residue... Read More

In this episode, I review some of the available research on mycorrhizal fungi and how it applies to cannabis and other edible crops. I also talk about how to determine what products are worth using in your garden, how best to apply mycorrhizal fungi, and what its role is in heavy metal uptake. 

Did you know that underneath the forest floor a sophisticated network of fungi forms a secret super highway between plants? Carrying resources and chemical messengers, this highway acts as a mysterious support system allowing trees to communicate and share material.  The Mycorrhizal Network, or the Wood Wide Web, was popularised by Dr. Suzanne Simard in her book “Finding the Mother Tree”. Today, we speak to Gabriel Orrego, a former student of Dr. Simard, co-founder of Symbiótica and our SUGi Forest Maker in Chile. Together, we'll explore this secret system of cooperation underneath our feet.

Learn ALL the Natural Farming, Composting, Effective Microbe, Mycorrhizal, Endophytic Preps & MORE with #RegenerativeSoil: https://matt-powers.mykajabi.com/regenerativesoil The New Season Begins Tomorrow!! I hope you can join us! Grow Abundantly, Learn Daily, & Live Regeneratively, - Matt Powers

This Saturday – 7 October – is UK Fungus Day. And so for this week's show, we're exploring the fascinating faces of fungi. We're taking a tour of the Fungus Garden at RHS Wisley, journeying back in time with biologist Merlin Sheldrake to investigate our historical uses of these organisms, chatting about 3 easy ways you can grow your own edible mushrooms, and finally, we're returning to Wisley to get an update on the science team's honey fungus research.  The music you hear at the very beginning of the show was created by Cosmo Sheldrake. The sounds you hear -- apart from the accompanying piano -- are from recordings of oyster mushrooms devouring a copy of Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life. You can listen to the entire song here. Links:   Saprotrophic fungi   Mycorrhizal fungi   Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures   Rebel Gardening: A Beginner's Handbook to Creating an Organic Urban Garden   Honey Fungus: identifying mushrooms   10 fun facts about fungi  

Today on Mushroom Hour we are honored by the presence of Dr. César Marin – Researcher and Academic at the Center for Research and Innovation for Climate Change, School of Sciences, Santo Tomas University in Chile. Among his many accomplished roles, César has been a Postdoc at the Department of Mycorrhizal Symbioses, at the Czech Academy of Sciences, a Researcher at the Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences of the University of O'Higgins and at the Department of Ecosystems and Environment, of the School of Agronomy and Forestry Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile AND Professor of “Soil, Ecosystems, and Global Change” at the Open University of Recoleta. Dr. Marin is the founder and lead of the South American Mycorrhizal Research Network, he is on the Board of Directors of the International Mycorrhiza Society, one of the initial members/Network laboratory of the Soil Biodiversity Observation Network (SoilBON), and a Research Associate of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN). He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the International Mycorrhiza Society Newsletter, on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture and Environment and of the Evolutionary and Genomic Microbiology section, Scientific Adviser of FungiFest, and collaborator on Skype a Scientist.    TOPICS COVERED:   Mycorrhizal Ecology   Underground Nutrient Economy   The Oldest Tree in the World   How Mineral Availability Shapes Fungal Ecologies in Soil   Starting a Research Career in Chile   Emerging Mycology Research in South America   Undiscovered Biodiversity    Living with Political Violence in Colombia   How Science can Diffuse Violence and Contribute to Positive Social Change   South American Mycorrhizal Research Network   Protecting Land Based on Below-Ground Biodiversity   Fungal Allies & Adapting to a Changing Environment    Multilevel Natural Selection Theory   How to Think About the Practice of Science   EPISODE RESOURCES:    Dr. César Marin Website: https://cesar-marin.com/   SPUN: https://www.spun.earth/   SoilBON: https://www.globalsoilbiodiversity.org/soilbon   South American Mycorrhizal Research Network: https://southmycorrhizas.org/  "Gran Abuelo" tree in Chile: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-cypress-in-chile-could-soon-break-the-record-for-worlds-oldest-tree   Butyriboletus loyo (fungus): https://www.ffungi.org/blog/butyriboletus-loyo-surviving-extinction   Cortinarius magellanicus (fungus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortinarius_magellanicus   Rhizoglomus cacao (fungus): https://www.schweizerbart.de/papers/nova_hedwigia/detail/115/101684/Rhizoglomus_cacao_a_new_species_of_the_Glomeraceae?af=crossref

What affects mycorrhizal communities? How do these communities influence trees and their seedlings? Do the relationships differ between angiosperms and gymnosperms? Where do we draw the line between science and conjecture? These questions and more are what drive Dr. Justine Karst's research. Join us as we explore what we do and do not know about common mycorrhizal networks.This episode was produced in part by Thomas, Will, Jamie, Waverly, Brent, Tanner, Rick, Kazys, Dorothy, Katherine, Emily, Theo, Nichole, Paul, Karen, Randi, Caelan, Tom, Don, Susan, Corbin, Keena, Robin, Peter, Whitney, Kenned, Margaret, Daniel, Karen, David, Earl, Jocelyn, Gary, Krysta, Elizabeth, Southern California Carnivorous Plant Enthusiasts, Pattypollinators, Peter, Judson, Ella, Alex, Dan, Pamela, Peter, Andrea, Nathan, Karyn, Michelle, Jillian, Chellie, Linda, Laura, Miz Holly, Christie, Carlos, Paleo Fern, Levi, Sylvia, Lanny, Ben, Lily, Craig, Sarah, Lor, Monika, Brandon, Jeremy, Suzanne, Kristina, Christine, Silas, Michael, Aristia, Felicidad, Lauren, Danielle, Allie, Jeffrey, Amanda, Tommy, Marcel, C Leigh, Karma, Shelby, Christopher, Alvin, Arek, Chellie, Dani, Paul, Dani, Tara, Elly, Colleen, Natalie, Nathan, Ario, Laura, Cari, Margaret, Mary, Connor, Nathan, Jan, Jerome, Brian, Azomonas, Ellie, University Greens, Joseph, Melody, Patricia, Matthew, Garrett, John, Ashley, Cathrine, Melvin, OrangeJulian, Porter, Jules, Griff, Joan, Megan, Marabeth, Les, Ali, Southside Plants, Keiko, Robert, Bryce, Wilma, Amanda, Helen, Mikey, Michelle, German, Joerg, Cathy, Tate, Steve, Kae, Carole, Mr. Keith Santner, Lynn, Aaron, Sara, Kenned, Brett, Jocelyn, Ethan, Sheryl, Runaway Goldfish, Ryan, Chris, Alana, Rachel, Joanna, Lori, Paul, Griff, Matthew, Bobby, Vaibhav, Steven, Joseph, Brandon, Liam, Hall, Jared, Brandon, Christina, Carly, Kazys, Stephen, Katherine, Mohsin Kazmi Takes Pictures, Manny, doeg, Daniel, Tim, Philip, Tim, Lisa, Brodie, Bendix, Irene, holly, Sara, and Margie.

More than a third of the world's current greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels go through underground networks of fungi, according to a new peer-reviewed study in Current Biology. That's a whopping 13 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. Mycorrhizal fungi act as a symbiotic partner of plants, seeking out nutrients and bringing them back to the plants' roots. In return, they accept carbon in the form of carbohydrates—which they then lock away in the structure of the fungi. This symbiotic relationship is nothing new to scientists; what's surprising is the magnitude of carbon stored. But how permanent is this sink? And what can we do to support fungi as a nature-based climate solution? In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Heidi-Jayne Hawkins, lead author of the new paper and research director at Conservation South Africa.  They cover topics like: The evolutionary history of mycorrhizal fungi  The mechanics of fungal carbon storage, which boosts carbon storage by 5-20% more than plants alone What we can do to support conditions for fungi to absorb carbon Open questions about the permanence of the storage Recommended Resources: Current Biology: Mycorrhizal mycelium as a global carbon pool Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media. Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Chelsi Abbott, a technical advisor and education specialist at the Davey Institute, talks about the mycorrhizal network including how it works and how it connects to plants. In this episode we cover:  What is mycorrhizae fungi (1:14)The beneficial relationship between the fungi and trees (1:59)Seeing mycelium in real life (4:07)How mycorrhizae fungi finds plants (4:45)How big mycorrhizal networks can be (6:52)How to help mycorrhizae help your plants (8:16)Things you might be doing that harm mycorrhizae (9:13)Is mycorrhizae okay for vegetable plants? (10:00)How Chelsi educates through her job (11:59)What Chelsi enjoys abut educating (13:03)Chelsi's Davey Tree journey (13:40)Benefits of mycorrhizae fungi for the plants (15:56)To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.  To learn more about the work Chelsi and the Davey Institute do, click here.Connect with Davey Tree on social media:Twitter: @DaveyTreeFacebook: @DaveyTreeInstagram: @daveytreeYouTube: The Davey Tree Expert CompanyLinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company  Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com.  Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!    

In this episode, we continue our journey in the world of mycorrhizal interactions with Dr. Jason Hoeksema. Join us as we investigate the ecological and evolutionary consequences of interactions between trees and mycorrhizal fungi and learn how complex and complicated these relationships truly are. This episode was produced in part by Jamie, Brent, Tanner, Rick, Kazys, Dorothy, Katherine, Emily, Theo, Nichole, Paul, Karen, Randi, Caelan, Tom, Don, Susan, Corbin, Keena, Robin, Peter, Whitney, Kenned, Margaret, Daniel, Karen, David, Earl, Jocelyn, Gary, Krysta, Elizabeth, Southern California Carnivorous Plant Enthusiasts, Pattypollinators, Peter, Judson, Ella, Alex, Dan, Pamela, Peter, Andrea, Nathan, Karyn, Michelle, Jillian, Chellie, Linda, Laura, Miz Holly, Christie, Carlos, Paleo Fern, Levi, Sylvia, Lanny, Ben, Lily, Craig, Sarah, Lor, Monika, Brandon, Jeremy, Suzanne, Kristina, Christine, Silas, Michael, Aristia, Felicidad, Lauren, Danielle, Allie, Jeffrey, Amanda, Tommy, Marcel, C Leigh, Karma, Shelby, Christopher, Alvin, Arek, Chellie, Dani, Paul, Dani, Tara, Elly, Colleen, Natalie, Nathan, Ario, Laura, Cari, Margaret, Mary, Connor, Nathan, Jan, Jerome, Brian, Azomonas, Ellie, University Greens, Joseph, Melody, Patricia, Matthew, Garrett, John, Ashley, Cathrine, Melvin, OrangeJulian, Porter, Jules, Griff, Joan, Megan, Marabeth, Les, Ali, Southside Plants, Keiko, Robert, Bryce, Wilma, Amanda, Helen, Mikey, Michelle, German, Joerg, Cathy, Tate, Steve, Kae, Carole, Mr. Keith Santner, Lynn, Aaron, Sara, Kenned, Brett, Jocelyn, Ethan, Sheryl, Runaway Goldfish, Ryan, Chris, Alana, Rachel, Joanna, Lori, Paul, Griff, Matthew, Bobby, Vaibhav, Steven, Joseph, Brandon, Liam, Hall, Jared, Brandon, Christina, Carly, Kazys, Stephen, Katherine, Mohsin Kazmi Takes Pictures, Manny, doeg, Daniel, Tim, Philip, Tim, Lisa, Brodie, Bendix, Irene, holly, Sara, and Margie.

Certain types of fungi can make up a vast network of carbon storage for our planet, which is why researchers are pleading that these little Mycorrhizal miracles be spared. This week on The Biofriendly Podcast we talk about the importance of symbiotic relationships in nature, how the fungal network is important in more ways than one, and why Noel and Jacob would happily give up their bodies to sentient fungus so they can finally take a break and relax. 

 Corinna Luyken joins us to share her journey and the story behind her latest book, ABC and You and Me. This delightful picture book celebrates movement, creativity, and the power of imagination.  We  delve into the inspiration and collaborative process behind, Patchwork, written by Matt de la Pena and illustrated by Corinna. We also touch upon the influence of mindfulness in Corinna's work and her personal connection to Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings. Join us as we explore the creative journey and profound messages embedded within Corinna's beautiful illustrations. Youtube link.[00:49] Corinna shares her background and how she discovered her passion for storytelling through illustrations and words.[02:30] Corinna discusses her unconventional path,  finding inspiration in dance improvisation classes and mindfulness practices.[06:45] Corinna shares the story behind her latest book, ABC and You and Me, and its evolution over the years.[13:07] Corinna highlights the importance of inclusivity and diversity in children's literature, and the joy of drawing people from all walks of life.[15:50] Corinna discusses the resources she is creating for teachers, including a movement script and interactive activities for ABC and You and Me.[19:18] Dr. Diane discusses using Patchwork as a tool to connect STEM and STEAM learning with multicultural picture books, encouraging teachers to reflect on their past, present, and future selves.[20:15] Corinna shares her experience working with Matt de la Pena on Patchwork and elements of the book that resonate with them both.[26:20] The influence of mindfulness in Corinna's work, inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh's book,  Peace Is Every Step[31:33] The connection between mindfulness and The Book of Mistakes, where changing perspectives can transform how we perceive the world.[33:06]The importance of giving kids the opportunity to look at the world from different perspectives[37:51]Mycorrhizal networks and how they connect to  The Tree in Me[40:35] Corinna shares her favorite contemporary authors and illustrators.[43:10] Corinna discusses her upcoming books, including In the Dark and The ArguersThanks for joining me for the first two seasons of the podcast. We are taking a short break this summer as I travel to Iceland and other places, bringing education and programs to teachers and districts everywhere. Please join me beginning in August as we start season three.Support the showRead the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram. *Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.

Dr. Gordon Walker and I explore how mycorrhizal relationships work. In this episode, you will gain a better understanding of the mycorrhizal relations between plants and fungi. Connect With Dr. Gordon Walker:  Dr. Gordon Walker is originally from Cambridge, MA but came to California to attend UC Santa Cruz, where he got a B.S. in Biochemistry and spent his free time sailing, scuba diving, and home brewing. Inspired to study fermentation, Gordon came to UC Davis and joined Dr. Linda Bisson's laboratory to focus on the biochemistry, genetics, and ecology of yeast in wine. After graduating with his Ph.D. in 2016, Gordon worked two harvests at Opus One helping to pioneer the use of novel fermentation control technology. He then returned to UC Davis to do post-doctorate work with Dr. Ron Runnebaum focused on how site specificity and elemental composition can affect fermentation behavior. Since he was a kid, Gordon has harbored a deep fascination with all things fungi; inspired by puffballs, chicken of the woods, truffles, and the microbial mishmash that produces sour beers. While living in New Zealand after finishing his PhD, Gordon took on the new hobby of mushroom foraging and started documenting his finds on Instagram. Through his social media (@FascinatedByFungi) he has reached millions around the globe, sharing the amazing diversity of colors, form, and function in the fungi kingdom. He is a renowned science communicator, published academic author, and award-winning speaker. His goal is to teach the world about mushrooms; inspiring others to take an active role in protecting nature and building a more sustainable future. Instagram  Facebook YouTube  TikTok Pinterest Patreon Website Buy Birdies Garden Beds Use code EPICPODCAST for 5% off your first order of Birdies metal raised garden beds, the best metal raised beds in the world. They last 5-10x longer than wooden beds, come in multiple heights and dimensions, and look absolutely amazing. Click here to shop Birdies Garden Beds Buy My Book My book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, is a beginners guide to growing food in small spaces, covering 6 different methods and offering rock-solid fundamental gardening knowledge: Order on Amazon Order a signed copy Follow Epic Gardening YouTube Instagram Pinterest Facebook Facebook Group

Mycelium and mycorrhizae are essential parts of the Soil Food Web, and using cultivation methods that support soil fungi can lead to the best cannabis you've ever grown. In this episode of Shaping Fire, host Shango Los talks with mycologist Stephanie Garcia about the functions of mycelium and mycorrhizae, some common misunderstandings, and best practices for amendments, pH, watering and transplanting to create and sustain a thriving rhizosphere.

Mikaela and Bryan of Alchemystic Fungi join Mason today for an explorative conversation around the multidimensional nature of the mycelial world.  Connected through their shared passion and reverence for mother nature and her plant queendom, Mason, Mikaela and Bryan dive deep into the unifying and medicinal role fungi play on the planet, placing a spotlight on the plethora of functional applications it can have, especially as a remedy to the industrial impacts of our time.  Whether it's churning through plastic, alchemising industrial waste, feeding the forests or supplying sustainable swaps for common synthetic materials, throughout this conversation we can begin to glean hope that despite the looming doom of the climate crisis, we have a future; and that future is fungi. Mikaela and Bryan spend their days on beautiful Bundjalung Country, visioning, researching, fossicking, educating and creating in the realms of fungi. Profoundly devoted to their craft and quest, this dynamic duo are deeply rooted in nature based ethics, unified by a circular economy where nothing goes to waste and everything is fed back into the death, birth, growth cycle of the earth.  Alchemystic Fungi have big dreams and I personally cannot wait to see Mikaela and Bryan bring their visionary magic into continuous creative form. A rich and inspiring listen.    Bryan, Mikaela & Mason discuss: - Heart math and the work of Stephen Harrod Buhner.  - The Alchemysitic Fungi origin story. - The mushroom market; competition verse connection and infinite unity. - Mycelium, water filtration and environmental toxins. - Mycorrhizal associations; the symbiotic relationship between a fungus and a root system. - Fungi and atmospheric carbon. - Mycelial based materials as the future of sustainable industry.   Resource guide Guest Alchemystic Fungi Website Mentioned in this episode  Paul Staments Christopher Hobbs Stephen Harrod Buhner Relevant Podcasts Entering The Imaginal Realms with Stephen Harrod Buhner (E#88) Psilocybin Journeywork & Fungi Academy with Jasper Degenaars (EP#120) The Wild World Of Medicinal Mushrooms with Jeff Chilton (EP#37)   SuperFeast Online Education Check Out The Transcript Below: https://www.superfeast.com.au/blogs/articles/alchemystic-fungi-with-bryan-mikaela-ep-190  

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, commonly abbreviated to AMF, coevolved with plants from 500 million to one billion years ago. Fossil evidence shows AMF in existence back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Paul Schreiner, Research Plant Pathologist at USDA-ARS in Corvallis Oregon explains that grapes are a very receptive host for AMF and their symbiotic relationship benefits both organisms. AMF helps plants obtain nutrients like potassium and phosphorous. The plant provides AMF with sugars and fatty acids. AMF lives both inside and outside of the plant. Inside the plant, they form arbuscules inside the root cell. These structures look like little trees and increase surface contact dramatically. Outside the plant, AMF mines for nutrients, likely releases carbon, and prevents soil erosion with its root hair-like structure. Listen in to learn the practices you want to use, and not use to increase AMF populations. References: 149: Fair Market Trade: Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and Grapevines 151: The Role of the Soil Microbiome in Soil Health 165: Become a Microbe Farmer: Make Compost Article Abstract: The diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi amplified from grapevine roots (Vitis vinifera L.) in Oregon vineyards is seasonally stable and influenced by soil and vine age Paul Schreiner, Oregon State University Courtesy Appointment Paul Schreiner on ResearchGate USDA-Agricultural Research Service Publications Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - DONATE SIP Certified Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript Craig Macmillan  0:00  Our guest today is Paul Schreiner. He is a research plant physiologist with USDA ARS in Corvallis, Oregon. And today we're going to talk about our arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Thanks for being on the program.   Paul Schreiner  0:11  Thank you for having me, Craig, happy to be here and talk about one of my favorite subjects.   Craig Macmillan  0:17  Obviously, can we just go with AMF, we'll just jump right to that. Yes. Because if I have to arbuscular too many times today, I'm gonna, I'm gonna crash.   Paul Schreiner  0:27  It's a tough one. And it's back in the old days, it used to be called vesicular, arbuscular mycorrhiza. So it was even harder.   Craig Macmillan  0:34  Yeah, it was even hard. We're not in the old days. Whenever a bunch of scientists were sitting around and going, like, you know, what the V this just too much. Can we get into three words, you know, was that big national meeting of mycologist. All right. So let's just go for you studied EMF for a long time. And you have stayed in the field. So you've studied vineyards? Let's start the very beginning. So what are AMF? And what kinds of roles do they play in the soil and interacting with plants?   Speaker 2  1:00  AMF are, as you said, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. So there are a group of fungi that evolved a really long time ago, estimates are from at least 500 million to a billion years ago.   Craig Macmillan  1:15  Wow.   Speaker 2  1:16  Yeah, that the billion number comes from some molecular clock kind of work, which, you know, is based on mutations in DNA that might be slightly overestimated, but there's fossil evidence that shows them at 450 million years ago. That's a really long time. You know, that's, that's what dinosaurs were around.   Craig Macmillan  1:35  Early dinosaurs if we had time later. I want to know how paleo Micology where I How do you find fungi, but we don't have time for that right now. But if we can come back to that, that's mind blowing.   Unknown Speaker  1:48  Yeah, we can.   Craig Macmillan  1:49  Go ahead.   Paul Schreiner  1:50  Yeah. So one thing I should say I think that's helpful is there's more than one kind of mycorrhizal fungi group, basically, right? The arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are this older group, or they evolved a very long time ago, and there's been a long period of coevolution with plants. And what's happened is the arbuscular mycorrhiza, which is the kind that grapevines form. Most of our crop plants also form arbuscular mycorrhizal that mycorrhizal group can no longer grow or complete their lifecycle by themselves on their own, they require a host plant to get carbon to survive, there's a whole bunch of other kinds of mycorrhizal fungi. The most important besides the arbuscular would be what we typically call Ecto mycorrhizal fungi and the Ecto are typically on forest trees, especially in temperate and boreal regions. Interestingly enough, a lot of the trees in the tropics are am or arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. So, it is important to just think about that, because some people, when they hear Mycorrhizal, they automatically assume one or the other Ecto or am or arbuscular. It's even far more complicated than that, because there's like five or six other types of mycorrhizal fungi that different plant groups associate with. However, the mycorrhizal fungi that I studied the arbuscular type are the most prevalent, they're the oldest. And you know, it's kind of an interesting thing, science wise that, based on our best information, they evolved, the whole world was one big continent, right? That's when they really radiated and evolved rapidly, I can get a sequence out of grapefruits. That's a mycorrhizal arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus. And it'll match 100% to a sequence in Europe somewhere, or in South America somewhere on any other crops. And, you know, so that's kind of an interesting thing.   Craig Macmillan  3:39  That's a question. And so if we have that kind of similarity in different parts of the world, does that make the research that's done either in on vines in another continent? Or on a different crop? Does that is that useful for understanding how these things work in advance?   Paul Schreiner  3:56  Certainly, yeah. Especially in the last, I'd say 20 years, because we've developed molecular tools to really delve into evolutionary questions and DNA, those kinds of things. Were starting to separate that group of fungi with a finer tooth comb, if you will, right. In a very broad sense, there was this massive radiation during Pangea, and then all the continents separated, a lot of that genetic material is very, very similar. However, there is still evolution going on. It's just you have to look harder for it. And you have to do whole genomes. That's not something that I do. I'm much more on the practical side of agriculture. But I tried to stay in tune with all that. This group of fungi traditionally were thought to be asexual. Now, we think there might be some sort of sexual phase, but it's unclear and not clearly demonstrated yet. We're learning more all the time. But it's also a slow, kind of a slow process. Their interest intractable to study this group of fungi a little bit because they do rely on a host plant to complete their lifecycle. So like, we can't culture them and put them in a lab. So were grown on petri dishes, you know, that kind of thing. They have to be grown with a plant. So we've developed ways to do that. But it does present challenges.   Craig Macmillan  5:10  Yeah, how do you do that.   Paul Schreiner  5:11  And this is really important for this group of fungi. From a practical sense, you have to grow them on a plant companies that produce mycorrhizal inoculum have this kind of fungi, the arbuscular type, they are growing them on plants. Typically, they're doing that in a some kind of either soil or soilless mix, and producing that in a greenhouse. And what like when I grow cultures of these fungi, we grow them on plants. One of the challenges with this group of fungi that relates to all this is that they're also ubiquitous around the globe, pretty much anywhere you have plants, these fungi are are there, the diversity is different in different places, of course, and there probably are some specialists, you know, groups, for example, that might be in more tropical climates versus more boreal climates. But I mean, we're still just beginning to understand that kind of information with this group of fungi. You asked also, what role do they do in terms of soil ecology or plant ecology? There's no question. The biggest role that this fungi plays is in helping plants obtain phosphorus. There is evidence of uptake of other nutrients, particularly those nutrients that are more immobile in soil. And that's why phosphorus is one in particular, but Potassium is another nutrient that's not super immobile in soil, they help take up potassium, they also help take up copper, zinc, I'd say those four are probably the top. However, they also play a role in nitrogen uptake in some plants. You know, we have addressed this in grapes with my former student, Tian Tian, who's now a farm advisor in Southern California working on table grapes, part of her thesis work was looking at the nitrogen impact on mycorrhizae, and how they help with nitrogen uptake. And we're continuing that work to some degree now with my new student. So far, we've not been able to show that the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are helping grapevines take up nitrogen. However, lack of evidence doesn't mean it can't happen. Other groups have shown in other plant systems that they do help the plants take up nitrogen. But still even even though that's true, without question, Phosphorus is the main thing that this group of fungi helps plants obtain from soil, you know, and phosphorus is a really critical thing, because yeah, phosphorus reserves are running out, you know, we've been mining basically guano, right? I mean, that's our main source of phosphorus all around the world. I just read an article it was in the New Yorker the other day, about phosphorus. I'm glad it's, you know, being highlighted again, because, you know, some people think 20 years from now, we're going to be out of phosphorus.   Craig Macmillan  7:40  I think so.   Paul Schreiner  7:41  And we're going to be in a world of hurt. Yeah. So it's hard to know for sure. Other people estimate we've got hundreds of years, but I don't know how good these estimates are. But helping plants get phosphorus means we don't need as much phosphorus to apply as a fertilizer. This is becoming an issue for basically the whole globe and human production. Yeah, their biggest role is Phosphorus, they also probably help do other things in plants, which I can kind of go down a list if you want.   Craig Macmillan  8:07  Well, before we do that, I do want to do that. Because I think that that's crucial because a number of ideas have come up and some I think are probably accurate. Some I think are not, but I don't know, AMF, it's a parasite or it's a symbiotic organism?   Paul Schreiner  8:21  Yeah there symbionts.   Craig Macmillan  8:23  Okay, there's symbionts. Now, how does the plant and the fungi interact? Are there things that go into the root or the root is coded by something? Or how does that work?   Paul Schreiner  8:34  Yeah, so that's, it's a pretty interesting process. If you start at the very beginning of a naked root, let's say, you know, a root does not colonize this starting to grow in soil. It sends out signals that the fungus consents, or the fungi, you know, there's more than one fungus in this group. Some of those signals, we already know what those are, like Striga lactones are one for example, you know, complicated term, but it's just a particular group of compounds plants make, the fungi can sense that. And they can grow towards the root, you know, the hyphy of the fungus, when it touches the root or makes contact with the root, it forms what's called an apex thorium, and then it makes a penetration peg and can basically punches through the wall of the root. This is the same way that fungal pathogens, you know, who are bad fungi, let's say right, they also use the same kind of mechanism. And typically when that's happening, you know, there's enzymes involved, bits of the cell wall of the plant and or some of its cuticle get kind of chewed up by enzymes and it releases certain compounds and then the plant can say, Oh, I know this one's a bad guy, or sometimes a plant is producing enzymes, for example, kinase that's trying to degrade the fungus itself and then you release certain other signal compounds, so the plant can sense that and in certain pathogens. We know that a very specific metabolite can be sensed by the plant and it stimulates the plant to respond in a defense response with the mycorrhizal fungi. The defense response is repressed.   Craig Macmillan  10:00  Okay, oh.   Paul Schreiner  10:01  Yeah, and so part of that is probably the kinds of chemicals that the and fungi have that are being released, you know, through these various enzymatic interactions have yet to be recognized by the plant as as the bad guy. Anyway, that's, that's maybe getting a little too into the weeds. But yeah, it all starts in the same way like a pathogen trying to get in or even, you know, there's a group of parasitic plants that form these things called hostaria, that attack roots of other plants. Same kind of process.   Craig Macmillan  10:31  It sounds to me like there's an enzymatic reaction, and then also a signaling reaction, which would probably be some kind of a protein, I would guess it's complicated, or it's a feedback thing in that, oh, I've been poked, oh, I'm gonna do this, Hey, wait a minute, this is okay. And then they kind of settles into a balance, I guess. Is that fair to say?   Paul Schreiner  10:49  Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. It's really complicated. And I mean, we only are beginning to understand the way they communicate. You know, there's a whole new class of compounds called effector proteins, which are secreted by different organisms and soil plant can recognize a lot of those, it crosses many things like even goes to nematodes, right? Like this is all kind of newer stuff that we're learning. But the bottom line is, the am fungi get in because they don't stimulate a defense response in the plant. And that's because there's been at least 500 million years of coevolution the plant knows these guys are okay, these are the good guys. Once they're inside, they grow throughout the cortex of fine roots. And then they form these things called arbuscules. And that's where they get their name. So the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi form arbuscles, our bus skills are basically like a little tree, if you can see a picture of it, it looks like a little tree inside a root cortical cell. It's just basically a way that both the fungus and the plant increase their surface area contact by like, a huge amount, you know, like, like, imagine what a tree looks like above ground, you know, like, especially without the leaves on the wintertime is a great time. That's exactly what it arbuscular Looks like in miniature inside a root cortical cell, the plant membrane grows all the way around that there's all kinds of activity that arbuscule cell is super active, because there's a lot of metabolic things happening. And that's where the plant and the fungus are exchanging nutrients,   Craig Macmillan  12:17  then then exchange is cell wall to cell wall. It's not puncturing into a cell, or is it punching into? Oh, heck, what's the word I'm looking for, a pipeline?   Paul Schreiner  12:28  No, the and fungi don't get into the vascular tissues of the plant, they actually colonize these cortical cells, they're sort of like, if you think about leaves, leaves the cells, we think about most of the mesophyll, or the spongy mesophyll. They're the ones that are doing photosynthesis, right? In the root cells that are most active in the fine roots are the cortical cells. That's where most of the activity is happening. So the fungi colonize there, they form these arbusculs which is, I mean, they're, they're amazing structures, they're very cool. They're short lived, like, a lot of times in arbuscular, will form, develop, and then degrade within, say, a week to 10 day period, you know, so it's like a fairly rapid turnover during that you increase the surface contact between the two organisms, but there's always still a membrane on the fungal side and a membrane on the plant side that keeps those two organisms separate, you know, their cytoplasm doesn't mix. You know, that would be weird, kind of, you know, would be weird. Yeah, we just don't see that in biology, you know, they really have much greater metabolic activity in those arbuscular cells. So what happens is, the fungus is giving phosphorus to the plant in this process, and other nutrients. And then in exchange, the plant is giving the fungus sugars. And we now know also fatty acids. Yeah, that's been a recent discovery in the last two decades. Anyway, I can't remember exactly when it came out. We now know because of genome sequencing efforts, that this group of fungi lack the ability to make fatty acids, they actually get those from the plant as well.   Craig Macmillan  14:01  So we've got the arbuscules on the roots. That's kind of the structure, we've got the peg in there. Now what's going on away from the roots? Are these big long, multi celled single identifiable organisms, or is it kind of a community or what what's going on?   Paul Schreiner  14:19  There are different fungi. Okay, so there's multiple species, a single root can have many species of fungi inside it. However, those species also probably mark out some territory. This part is still a little bit unclear because it's really hard to pinpoint this stuff. Just as an example, our research vineyard here at Oregon State University that I work on, even though I'm ARS I also work in in part of OSU, our research vineyard. I think we found 19 Different mycorrhizal fungi. colonizing the groups, the roots of the grape vines, you know, there's a fair number, how they actually interact on a very tiny scale like within an individual single individual root is it's hard to know for sure, that's again Getting off into the weeds a bit.   Craig Macmillan  15:01  Not so much because I'm going somewhere with this.   Paul Schreiner  15:04  I want to get back to your question though about what's happening outside because that's really critical. Yeah, what's happening inside is we have these aruscules and hyphae growing inside the root, and it can be, it can be very intense, especially in Grapes. Grapes are a super host, in my view, they really love mycorrhiza they get heavily colonized. But then on the outside out in the soil, the naked hyphae, if you will, of the mycorrhizal fungi are exploring the soil. And that external phase we call extra radical hyphae, it actually is physiologically different than what's on the inside of the root. I'm trying to think of a good analogy, but basically, the inside part has a different function than the outside part. And so the inside part is trying to get carbon from the plant give the plant phosphorus and other nutrients, the outside part is mining the soil for that phosphorus, exploring the soil, it also probably exudes a significant amount of its carbon into the soil and helps the soil microbial community get a carbon source as well. And these fungi seem to play a critical role in helping soil aggregate and or resist erosion, basically, I mean, the evidence of this is, is pretty clear. But we also know that roots do the same function, especially root hairs, you know, so one way to think about these fungi is they're, they're sort of like root hairs. Except they're even finer, you know, their job is to connect root to the soil and to the soil, water and nutrient supply   Craig Macmillan  16:30  Two spatial questions. One, when they say they explore space, how deep do we find an organism? Do we find a fungus that's connected to a to a vine or plant, right? So how far down is it going? And then how far out in lateral space is it going?   Paul Schreiner  16:44  People have studied this by using artificial system where we can put a screen for example, like we can grow a plant in a greenhouse in soil, have it be colonized by microbes and fungi, and then put a screen in place that the roots cannot cross. But the fungi can, you know, something below like, or I don't know, somewhere in the ballpark of 40 micron diameter screen, so very fine screen like a silk screen, the hyphae can grow in there. So like people have shown they can grow 15 or 20 centimetres away, no problem, you know, significant distance when you're talking about soil as far as how deep they go in soil, that varies a lot with the rooting depth of whatever the plant of interest is, or, you know, the ecosystem, we tend to see greater colonization in the, in the surface soil, which just fits everything else that happens in the surface soil, right? I mean, that's where more of the water and nutrients are being turned over. It's also you know, where the soil environment is more favorable to life, right, because of this whole soil structure, idea and porosity, allowing oxygen to get into the soil in a vineyard. Particularly, you know, we always talk about vineyards and how the roots go all the way to China kind of thing, right?   Craig Macmillan  17:52  Until you hit clay or limestone.   Paul Schreiner  17:54  Sometimes roots can go really far. I mean, 30 meters I've seen reported and get into, you know, basically rock, right? There's not too much mycorrhizal fungi down where we're there in rock, we did the study, again, it was at the research vineyard. And when you get into what is known as the sea horizon, in the soil, which we would typically think of as the subsoil, it's where it's more compact, there's less porosity, and it's pretty dense, right? And it's more like clay, colonization drops off a lot, you know, we might have 90% of roots are colonized in the topsoil. But in the subsoil might be 30%. That's because many things, one, the environment is just not suitable for life in general, at that depth, because it's compacted, there's less oxygen, it's a different environment.   Craig Macmillan  18:37  And again, you've mentioned AMF need more than just a plant root, they need to be out in the environment, there needs to be oxygen, there needs to be water, there needs to be other, there needs to be a favorable environment for life period. Right now, one thing we've talked about water holding. In other interviews, we've talked about water holding capacity improves in fields that have a higher or more successful AMF population, and that you talked about aggregates, it's part of that picture. We've talked about nutrient movement particular phosphorus, one of the things that I've heard people just kind of say colloquially is that if you have a meaningful mix, whatever the popular population, ecosystem involving AMF, it's going to lead to greater stability in the vine, and give the vine an ability to tolerate drought stress a little bit better. Are you finding those things? Are those things true? Even if it's kind of anecdotal? I mean, you're scientist, so you don't like anecdotal probably. But   Paul Schreiner  19:33  Yeah, so that's, you know, that's the interesting world of science in my world. I need to have evidence for what I say, especially, especially when it comes to publishing scientific papers, right?   Craig Macmillan  19:43  Well, of course, yeah.   Paul Schreiner  19:44  But then there's also opinion, you know, sometimes you can't show things in science. I mean, science isn't perfect, right? Mistakes happen, and some things are just more intractable and difficult to show, however, okay, on a broad scale, there's pretty good evidence that mycorrhizal fungi helped Plants tolerate drought stress better than non mycorrhizal plants when you know when they've been compared. So that has certainly a long term consequence that you might think would eventually relate to stability in some way.   Craig Macmillan  20:16  So one of the reasons that I asked that is science, Applied Science, especially applied Agricultural Science often is moved by growers noticing something or having an image in their head about how something works. And then folks like you come in and say, Okay, well, let's find out. Another thing that I've heard people mentioned that I don't know is true or not, is do AMF actually move water into the plant? We know that they transport minerals, or they actually move water into the plant?   Paul Schreiner  20:42  Yeah, that's a great question. The answer to that question at this point in time is, they don't move water in a way that we would like to think of it, they're not acting like a pipe, because their own cytoplasm is a, you know, it's a vital part of them, it's just like us, you know, like the inside of ourselves, we're not just gonna give that away, people used to think of them like, Oh, they're just pipes out there, and the water just flows right through them into the plant. Well, that's impossible, that just can't happen. What does happen potentially, is water moves on the external surface of the hyphae. Because similar to a plant root, they exude some carbon, they have some structure makes connection to soil water in the pores of soil. And so in theory, because these fungi are much finer diameter, let's say 50 to 100 times smaller in diameter than a root is, you know, fine root of a plant so they can get into smaller pores inside the soil and get access to soil water that the root may not be able to get access to. On top of that, there's potential especially because they help aggregate soil and help improve soil structure, they may actually in the long run, improve soil water holding capacity, because they're adding to that long term carbon storage of the soil. It's really well known that as you add organic matter to soil, you improve the water holding capacity of soil. The am fungi do do that. I mean, partly it's this bit of carbon that they exude into the soil rhizosphere itself or the we call it the micro rhizosphere. Even their turnover. So when they die, or when they're eaten by something else, they're also then contributing to that pool of soil carbon, and the more old and complex that carbon is, probably the more it's tends to be tied to soil, water and small pores. Yes, they do help, we can show that they help plants take up a little bit more water, but it's not a big deal. You know, it's kind of like let's say the plant on a given day use 10 liters of water and you let the plant go to the wilt point. Maybe the mycorrhizal plant got another 10 mils of water out of 10 liters, you know, it's not a huge amount.   Craig Macmillan  22:55  They're not the pipeline, but they are changing the soil environment such that the water holding capacity is changing. And that makes it more water for the mines to pick up. So it's not that there is a pipeline through the mycorrhizal fungi but that it's changing the environment in a way that makes it more likely that the water will be held and that the mind then has it available.   Paul Schreiner  23:12  Right and that that effect is small, it's hard to show because it's very small. The other thing that they probably help with the plants is that as soil dries, nutrients are harder to get. And particularly those nutrients that are more immobile and soil like phosphorus, a big part of why we see improved drought tolerance in a mycorrhizal plant is because they are accessing soil phosphorus better than a non mycorrhizal plant can and that's contributing to the overall drought tolerance of that plant. So some of our effects that we see are an indirect effect of improved phosphorus nutrition that goes across to any of the other functions that AMS might help plants do. Like another big category that I feel I should mention is there's good evidence that mycorrhizal fungi help plants resist or become more tolerant to other pathogens in the soil. So the bad guys or even nematodes, a lot of work has been done on this, you know, the experiments run the gamut, like they're there all over the place, because, you know, we're talking about really complex things. One of the things that we know, is that just improving the overall phosphorus nutrition of the plant and or other nutrients, sometimes it's, it might be another new nutrient that's limiting that gets you added tolerance to to any of these other effects, right? Whether it's drought, whether it's a root pathogen, even like insect feeding on above ground parts of the plant, you know, I mean, if you're in a better nutritional state, you're going to be better able to tolerate a lot of things. A lot of what happens with AMF is linked to their role in phosphorus, you know, so going back to this phosphorus story, some of my colleagues get mad at me because I they think I'm too opinionated about phosphorus. But I mean   Craig Macmillan  24:59  You You're having beers with people. And they're like, Paul, when you get off the phosphorous thing?   Paul Schreiner  25:05  Yeah, they're like, come on, Paul, you know, they play a role in nitrogen too.   Craig Macmillan  25:10  Okay, so we're in at a time with a couple of things I just absolutely, positively have to hit on if we draw the big old box around this topic, we would say, AMF are beneficial for vineyards. Okay, so what kinds of things can I do as a grower to encourage a AMF and what kinds of things should I not do that might dink the AMF community?   Paul Schreiner  25:29  Very good question. The most important thing probably is to think about AMF, before you plant a vineyard. And so like in some of the materials that I've I've, I've written about and published on, especially for like trade journals and trying to help growers, it's really important in my mind to separate pre plant versus post plant, and at the pre plant stage is really a time you should think about mycorrhizal fungi because that's the time. If they're not there, you've got a problem. But chances are, they're already there. It's also the pretty much the time that you can add mycorrhiza and they're going to do something, you have an opportunity to inoculate vines if you want when they go into the ground. The biggest thing about pre plant is what is the past history of that land, especially the recent couple of years if you've had plants on it, especially if their host plants for mycorrhizal fungi, which almost all of our crop plants are, even if it came out of say, forest land, and then was converted to vineyard. Typically, there's a AMF there because even in the forest, which are dominated by Ecto mycorrhizal trees, for example, here, and in the north, west, for example, there are still understory plants that rely on AMF. And so the AMF are there, normally, you don't have to inoculate. But knowing what the land history is, is very helpful. The worst thing you can do is of course, apply a fumigant, which we are doing much, much less now than we used to. Not that that will will stop entirely. But if you fumigate especially with like in the old days, methyl bromide was the main fumigant used, you'll kill the mycorrhizal fungi. And so you would want to inoculate if you did that. The other thing is if you have a really, really long period of fallow land, and when I say fallow, I mean fallow no weeds, nothing, most of our weed species also support AMF. So I mean, even having weeds on the ground before you plant a vineyard is going to keep the population up. And again, that goes back to the biology, this group of fungi that they can't grow on their own. And so eventually they'll be depleted in soil if there's no plants to keep feeding them. So that kind of relates back to the very beginning of our conversation, which is why this group of fungi is different. So like, basically avoid long fallow plant a cover crop of clover, for example, that's a good one, because Clover is very heavily colonized. It also provides nitrogen, which is good for vines, you know, especially at establishment and avoid fumigants. Once you get to the post plant side of things, I think the most critical things to think about are tillage, and then fertilizer use.   Craig Macmillan  27:56  What happens there?   Paul Schreiner  27:59  With tillage, you breakup the mycorrhizal network that's in the soil. And so like we talked about that external phase, or what we call the extra radical hyphae of this group of fungi, that phase is out in the soil and it actually survives and overwinters even for example, like you know, some of it dies back, but some of it remains if you keep destroying that with tillage. Eventually you reduce the population of AMF, there are a few fungi that seem to be much more tolerant of tillage. And these are some of our favorite lab rat ones, for example. Ones that are tolerant of disturbance have been ones that are most often done well in the laboratory and are easily easy to culture. Again, we're culturing on a plant but still similar kind of thing. So tillage is one thing. The fertilizer issue is I would avoid both high nitrogen and high phosphorus inputs. We have shown in some of my work if you apply phosphorus, for example, to the foliage, which some people like to do, you can reduce mycorrhizal colonization. It's all tied into the whole plant response to these this group of fungi, you know, plants evolved with the fungi, right? It's not just the fungi that were evolving. They know that the main function is phosphorus. So when the plant has high phosphorus status, it down regulates the colonization by this group of fungi. Well, when you get plants phosphorus, especially to the foliage, it sends a signal to the roots, I'm very happy, and it tends to reduce colonization.   Craig Macmillan  29:24  Specifically, how many units of nitrogen are we talking about?   Paul Schreiner  29:28  That gets into tricky territory.   Craig Macmillan  29:30  You know, if I'm putting on a 777 am I am i doing a bad thing?   Paul Schreiner  29:35  Probably not course, it also depends on the rate, you know, I mean, 777 But you're putting out 200 pounds per acre that's   Craig Macmillan  29:42  Yeah, that's why use the term units.   Speaker 2  29:45  Yeah, you know, and the thing about viticulture is we don't need as much nitrogen and as much phosphorus that as we do in other classic farming crops, you know, like the big the big crops corn soybean commodity. Yeah, commodity grapes are super cheap. super efficient at getting nutrients, other work that I do, which is actually more of more of my time spent on nutrition than it is on mycorrhizal fungi. But, you know, we've shown that high nitrogen is not necessarily a good idea in the vineyard, right. And most people know that. And almost intuitively, you don't want a massive canopy, that shading the fruit.   Craig Macmillan  30:19  In a vineyard, if I'm putting on nitrogen at a replacement rate, so I'm looking at how many pounds per acre I took out, I'm guessing and how many pounds per ton that relates to taking in cycling from canes and leaves that fall on the ground and go into the soil. You know, most vineyards you're looking at not a lot. So I've looked at some organic systems that are putting in, you know, two pounds per acre, the highest I think I've ever seen was 25 pounds per acre. Eight is a pretty good number kind of on average total. It sounds to me like these replacement level rates, not the high rate, but the replacement level rates where we're, we purposely are trying not to get a bigger canopy, we're not trying to bump a vine. That sounds like those are fine.   Paul Schreiner  30:58  I think so we've done work here, see, it was in Chardonnay, and also Pinot Noir. And we were putting out 20 and 40 pounds of N per acre. These are not high rates in in my view, especially when we look at agriculture as a whole right, we can see a little bit of a depression in mycorrhizal colonization, when we apply, say 40 pounds, or 60 pounds of nitrogen per acre, we don't wipe it out entirely, you know, the vines also can recover. The other thing is, the kind of nitrogen you put out may play a role as well. More soluble classic conventional fertilizers that have more soluble N and especially more soluble P will probably have a more negative impact. If you're putting out more organic sources of those fertilizers, because they're more complex, you know, they don't cause as quick of a response in the plant. And it does seem that that does not have as a negative impact on AMF, as the more soluble forms.   Craig Macmillan  31:58  There we go. Now we're out of time, unfortunately, this could go on forever, you and I should get together sometime and just hang out talk about phosphorus all you want. What is one piece of advice that you would give to grape growers related to this topic, especially if they want to increase or maintain in AMF population in their vineyard?   Paul Schreiner  32:17  You know, the most important thing is to be conservative with inputs. I think that's probably the the key thing conservative with both water inputs and nitrogen inputs and phosphorus inputs. You know, the role of fungicides, so far does not really appear to be a big deal. And again, we don't have time to go into all that. But the evidence that we've collected so far suggests that you know our fungicide spray programs, for example, which we're talking about controlling things in the canopy, I'm not seeing a clear effect on microns of fungi because of that. If you overwater over fertilize. That's when you're going to do damage to Microsoft fungi, you know that that's clear. And then the other piece of advice is think about it pre plant, because that's the time you can actually do something put a cover crop in prior to planting the vineyard and I bet 99% of the time, the mycorrhizal population that's there will be sufficient to colonize the vine roots and be healthy goes back to just very briefly the fact that I consider grape vines, a very, very receptive host for mycorrhizal fungi. I've looked at other crop plants, including other woody perennials, and grape vines are so heavily colonized. It's it's truly amazing.   Craig Macmillan  33:28  That is cool. Where can people find out more about you? And or more about this topic? You mentioned research that's been published recently on some of these topics. Where can we find you?   Paul Schreiner  33:39  So the easy way to find me is type my name Paul Schreiner. And grapevine will be in the title in the show notes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you just put my name and grapevine nutrition, or grapevine and AMS, I should pop up as the first thing on Google. But you can also just email me paul.schreiner@usda.gov. And I'm happy to provide for those that are more interested in getting into the weeds. I can provide you some lists of good references and whatnot. So I'm happy to do that.   Craig Macmillan  34:05  That's fantastic. My guest today has been Paul Shriner. He is a research plant physiologist with USDA ARS. He's based in Corvallis, Oregon. This has been really fun for me. I hope it's fun for our listeners, too. This is such a hot topic. And so thank you very much for being on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Paul,   Unknown Speaker  34:22  Thank you so much, Craig. It was great having this conversation   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

It turns out that you owe a LOT to fungus. Specifically, you get more health and flavor in your food than you ever imagined from something called mycorrhizal fungi. In this episode, we dive into the following:What are these magical fungi?Why is it so crucial for creating healthy soil and flavorful food?What kind of farming disrupts it?What kind of farming enhances it?How do these fungi change the flavor of food?We dive into the topic using the following resources:A clip from a presentation from Dr. Jill Clapperton on soil healthFarmer Gail Fuller from KansasBook: What Your Food Ate by David R. Montgomery & Anne BikleBook: Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne LewisBook: Entangled LIfe by Merlin SheldrakeSupport the showBrought to you by the Global Food and Farm Online Community Click here to subscribe on your favorite platform or click here to listen on our website. Support the show through Patreon -- Patreon.com/TastingTerroir

Trees communicating? Protecting their offspring? Sending warning signals? Even helping “competing” species? These are some of the incredible things we have heard about the “Wood Wide Web”. But, is it true? Or has the story got ahead of the science? A team of mycorrhizal researchers has discovered some painful truths about these fungal connections we have all come to be fascinated with. Justine Karst breaks down the myths and misconceptions about Common Mycorrhizal Networks (CMN), and the pain it caused her to do so. The first 50min is the science, the last 50min is the story behind it. ResourcesJustine's Lab Justine's paperSponsorsWest FraserGreenLink Forestry Inc.Quotes58.47 - 59.00: “If it makes you really mad, or if it makes you really happy, pause.” TakeawaysThe wood wide web (09.17)Justine talks about how the belowground transfer of carbon in the field is not conclusively proven to occur through a mycorrhizal network, what some call the ‘wood wide web'. A common mycorrhizal network is formed when roots of two different plants are physically connected by fungal tissue. Exploring functions (15.22)Only two studies in the world have done high-resolution sampling showing with high certainty that the same fungus links two roots of different trees. Mycorrhizal fungi are essential in forests, but the function of common mycorrhizal networks is inconclusive.Debunking myths (27.23)The paper that Justine, Melanie and Jason worked on evaluated some of the widely held assumptions about common mycorrhizal networks - that they are widespread in forests, their benefits to trees, and the communication of warning signals between trees through the networks. Not enough studies have been done to conclusively support these ideas, and the methods used are difficult to control for confounding effects. The truth (43.40)Justine, Melanie and Jason could not find any peer-reviewed, published field studies testing the claim that trees recognize their kin and send warning signals to them. One graduate thesis even proved those claims wrong. When they looked at how scientists interpret these claims, they found that nearly 50% of the papers today citing original studies made unsupported statements. “We're looking to nature for how society should behave or act” (55.50)While Justine wants to see people rethink their connections with nature, she does not want science to be distorted towards that end. Because of the misinformation about common mycorrhizal networks, the difference between possibility and established fact has blurred. “I'd rather know the truth than believe in a fairytale” (1.06.00)Justine acknowledges that her study may have burst the bubble for many but believes that the truth is helpful to all scientists. However, the lack of conclusive evidence on mycorrhizal common networks, in her opinion, does not devalue the conversations around species interactions. Critically engaging with feedback (1.13.12)Justine, Melanie and Jason's study had three scientists sign the review, and their associating their reputation with the study was reassuring to her. The trio revised the manuscript based on their feedback and ensured it was thorough.

I learn more about the incredible relationships between plants and mycorrhizal fungi with the help of plant community ecologist Dr Sarah Emery, and I answer a question about a frozen jade tree. For full show notes visit https://www.janeperrone.com/on-the-ledge/251-mycorrhizal-fungi

Okay, if you want to avoid grief tips, skip to the 13 minute mark :) This one has a lot of updates but mostly is about what to look for when buying plants in spring after growers have had less light all winter, as well as tips for folks struggling with plant care. Unrelated photo is of a bucket of Oh Happy Dirt defying gravity like a total boss. Mycorrhizal boss moves, son!

Toby Kiers, Executive Director & Chief Scientist at SPUN (Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) shares about their research into the mycorrhiza network, mapping biodiversity, DNA sequences of mycorrhizal fungi and a lot more about the wonderful world under our feet.She is the Jane Goodall of fungi (according to the words of previous guest Rose Marcario, former CEO of Patagonia).---------------------------------------------------Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits on www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Support our work:Share itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture----------------------------------------------------More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/toby-kiers.Find our video course on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course.----------------------------------------------------The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice. Support the showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!

Today on Mushroom Hour we have the privilege of being joined by Prof. Toby Kiers - Professor of Evolutionary Biology and University Research Chair at Vrije Fryy Universiteit Universitight Amsterdam. Her lab uses nanoprobes and high-resolution imaging to map the nutrient flows and architecture of plant-fungal networks. She is globally recognized for her scientific work in the evolution of symbiotic trade, and her public outreach activities, including a 2019 TED talk. Kiers won an Ammodo Award in 2019 for “unfettered science”, was awarded the E.O. Wilson Award for Natural History in 2021 and won an IMPACT award from the Dutch science foundation in 2021 for founding the non-profit SPUN - the Society for the Protection of Underground networks.   TOPICS COVERED:   Morel Memories  & Research in Panama   Refining Definitions of Symbiosis and Mutualism    How Ecosystems are Shaped by Competitive and Symbiotic Dynamics   Symbiosis and Mutualism without Altruism    Competition within Mutualisms    Biological Market Theory   "Decisions" vs. Genetic Strategies   Quantum Dot Technology & Visualizing Fungal Networks   Mysteries of Bi-Directional Nutrient Transport & Molecular Motors     Fungal & Plant Market Manipulations   Can Understanding Fungal Market Economies Help Us Predict the Stock Market?    How Do We Quantify Flows in Real World Forests?   SPUN – The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks    Shifting Conservation Priorities to the Unseen   EPISODE RESOURCES:   Toby Kiers Website: https://tobykiers.com/   SPUN Website: https://www.spun.earth/   Ronald Noë (Biological Market Theory): https://sites.google.com/site/ronaldnoe/RN-home?authuser=0   Rhizophagus aggregatus (fungus): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?id=241619   

We're back for another very fun interview on our podcast of Unlocking YOUR World of Creativity. We go around the world to talk to creative practitioners and leaders about how they get inspired, how they organize their ideas, and how they gain the confidence and connections to launch their work out into the world.  Today, we explore the world of NYC-based artist and creative director Asher Young.  Asher He is the founder of http://cyi.studio/ (Challenge Your Imagination,) a creative direction, design, and producing studio developing projects internally and for others.  Our main conversation will be around Asher's most recent piece https://www.bbg.org/feature/lightscape/pathways (Pathways at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden), going on Tour with DPR, and what the collaboration and logistical side of creating these immersive audience experiences are like. Pathways at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden use lasers to draw lines of light between a series of trees, creating a visible network and illuminating a new path for Lightscape visitors to explore.  Asher describes it as “a high-powered laser that bounces off trees through the botanic gardens that you can see at night. It's a beam of life that sort of ricochets between the trees” The focus of the piece is on Mycorrhizal networks. Inspired through the works and science of Suzanne Simard, an ecologist discovered that trees communicate their needs and send each other nutrients via a network of latticed fungi buried in the soil — in other words, she found, they “talk” to each other   Asher explains, “that her work discovered that it's not competition. Plants actually share resources” Pathways utilize light, which is the source of nutrients for the plants at night, to show those connections when a lot of that work is being done. https://www.asheryoung.com/projects/dpr (DPR: Regime Tour) is a world tour that immerses fans in the world of music collective DPR. Asher talks about the part of the creative process with this world tour is about rethinking what the concert experience could be from the perspective of an audience.  How do we merge theater, art, installation, and music?  How do we think about collectives and how do we demonstrate that to the audience? How do we use the pre-show to warm people up to other things that are gonna happen later? The show opens in September 2022  Mark asks: “What are the logistics of moving this experience from city to city?” when you're doing 55 cities worldwide and they're all different sizes it does have to fit in trailers It feels like five or six iterations of the concept and the physical elements of the show are incredibly modular The running theme through the interview was collaboration and Asher explains how he and his team approach it “by establishing the framework of what matters and the idea that we're trying to articulate, the teams can come together and sort of ricochet and problem solve around it while maintaining that core principle.” Toward the end of the interview, Asher gave us a few sneak peeks into future projects in the works. He said they are developing internally a lot of shows and experiences that are more hospitality-based or hotel-based, some that cross genres, i.e.; a dinner theater show, and projects that are more art-based. We look forward to seeing what's next in the creative mind of Asher Young. You can reach out to Asher Young, and see his creative works at https://www.cyi.studio/ (cyi.studio) Also, check out his Instagram page @cy.studio

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, known as AMF, has an interesting an important relationship with plants, grapevines included. AMF helps vines take up mineral nutrients, creates a layer of protection from pathogens by occupying plant cells, and seems to improve soil structure and water movement.  In turn, grapevines supply carbohydrates to the fungus. Scientists believe the pant calculates the value of giving carbon in exchange for nutrients provided by the AMF. Tian Tian, Viticulture Farm Advisor, Cooperative Extension Kern County, UC Cooperative Extension studies this super host relationship between grapevines and AMF to determine how farmers can cultivate this natural alliance. She also covers how different Nitrogen applications impact wine flavor. A winemaker can create tropical notes or clean flavors in Chardonnay through soil, foliar or winery applications of Nitrogen. References: 28: Understanding Soil Health 72: Soil Microbes and Nutrient Availability Appropriate Time to Measure Leaf and Stem Water Potential (Abstract only) Dr. Tian Tian, Cooperative Extension Kern County Impact of Nitrogen Fertilizer or Nitrogen Wine Additions on Productivity and Sensory Outcomes (Abstract only) Managing Nitrogen in the Vineyard and the Winery Efficiently SIP Certified Sustainable Ag Expo November 14-16, 2022 | Use code PODCAST for $50 off The Effect of Soil Nitrogen Enrichment on Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (Video) Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org. Transcript Craig Macmillan  0:00   Today is Dr. Tian Tian Viticultural Farm Advisor with Corporate Extension, Kern County, part of the UC Corporate Extension system. Dr. Tian, thank you for being with us today.   Dr Tian Tian  0:11  Thanks for having me.   Craig Macmillan  0:12  Can you tell us a little bit what's your role as a Viticulture Farm Advisor? That's a term that we hear but we don't always know kind of what it means.   Dr Tian Tian  0:19  My title is a Viticulture Farm Advisor. So there's a three components involved in my job extension, research and education. So a lot of times what we do is we help growers to solve problems, through farm calls and to find better solutions for their problems through a research project. And if they are something, knowledge have been obtained through research or other sources, we communicate with growers and to inform them the availability of those knowledge. And the meanwhile, education is occurred during this process. Specifically for Kern County, this is a big area for grape production. So 60% of the grape in the county are table grapes, and close to 30% are wine grapes, and 10% is a rasin grapes. The nature of my work, I work close with table grape growers, then to help them to solve the production issues they may have. And they're teaching me a lot of things along the way.   Craig Macmillan  1:20  I'm sure. I'm sure. So you have a role directly with farmers.   Dr Tian Tian  1:25  Yeah, yeah, it's way, a lot of times we find those research questions in the vineyard and a grower call us to say, for example, last year, was it delayed, the spring grows, a lot of them are observed. Stunted growth, and they're just wondering what's happened. And then that is actually as a start off me to look into what it is the reasons lead to the problem. And next year, what can we do better. And then, early this year, when we have our annual meeting and a rower come and they just say, Okay, now we know how there's some practice we can use to avoid the problem again, and how to adjust our practice based on the weather we got in certain years. And what other things we should taking, taking consideration when making management practices. All of those has been a really beneficial for both sides. I learned a lot from them, and then they actually benefited from the extension work were doing.   Craig Macmillan  2:25  That's really great. And I'm glad that that exists. And I'm glad you're on the job there in Kern. And prior to that you have done a lot of research in the area of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. And also in terms of the effects of nitrogen, either as fertilizer or natural uptake, into vines and impacts on buying productivity and also on wine quality and all of that. Mycorrhizal fungi are something that a lot of us hear about. We're aware of. We know they're important. It's part of the soil biome, but I think a lot of us can use at least a refresher course. What exactly are arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi? What is the role that they play in the soil microbiome?   Dr Tian Tian  3:05  That's a really good question. Actually. I feel arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi is probably a one group of the fungus were no more than a lot of other groups. The reason for that is arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi actually form the fungal structure inside of the critical cell of grapevine roots. And it's probably something happened million years ago that grapevine just decided they really liked this a friend. So for a lot of roots, we have looking at 80, let me say 60 to 95% of the root cells are a critical cells are colonized by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. And so it's kind of a reflection about how how tight those association is. So in terms of what does the fungus do, there's a main, the three main roles we know. The top is to help the plants to take mineral nutrients from the soil. So especially those fully mobile ones and the ones we know more than others is a phosphorus. So it's in the vineyard where you have low phosphorus availability, the day you fumigat it and then just kill that AMF inoculum and your ends up with a stunted vine because phosphorus deficiency and it has been observed in the past. But once you innoculate with AMSF they're improving the efficiency of obtain those fully mobile nutrients. And the second thing we believe or it needs more research into the area is because they have a lot of fungal structure is a high fast growing in the soil. So they improve the aggregation of the soil and then improve the water movement in the soil. So that is, that is a new area where or kind of the newer research or dive into it is maybe the grapevines are also say creating a lot of the, let's say sugar or other compounds a carbohydrate compounds through AMF hyphae. And so it's influencing the soil microbial community in that way. So it is a really interesting fungus where they have part leaving the plants and apart out of the plants, and also there have a critical contribution to grapes. But it's a fair trade when the AMF is working hard to grow the hyphae through to explore the soil for those mineral nutrients. And the grapevines are supply carbohydrate to those fungus as well. So what they caught is a fair trade market. In other crop, what they find is actually the plants were reward the AMF be able to deliver the more resources they need.   Craig Macmillan  5:54  So are AMF actually do they play the role of kind of an extension of the roots? They're bringing resources to the root?   Dr Tian Tian  6:03  Yeah, kind of you can understand that way they consider the the high face or extension of the roots. But there's other arguments is a hybrid much stronger as compared to a roots. So what is probably not a really close analogy. So what we find is the root length off a grapevine is kind of the distance your walk your dog in a day, but the length of the hyphae the vine can hold is the probably the lens you can kind of make a circle around the earth for at least one circle. So yeah, because there's lower construction cost, if you have thinner hyphae compare with grapevine roots, which is thicker as compared to grass and as a crop. But that data is only opt in to from our greenhouse trial. It's does not necessarily mena its representing what happened in the natural environment.   Craig Macmillan  7:03  How do you study the stuff in the natural environment? This seems really hard. You're talking about things that are finer and sounds like very fragile, even compared to roots. And if you're growing things in like a clay, clay loam soil, it seems like it'd be hard to tease these little bits out or to study how things moved or anything. How do you do it in the field?   Dr Tian Tian  7:22  Yeah, so in the field, what our focus is we focus on the roots, it is really difficult to get even in the greenhouse where the vines growing in a confined space, but those hyphae are really hard to pick up from the soil. And then to find them to isolate them and to evaluate them is really difficult. But there's a certain protocol can be used to study that area. It's just not that what I did for my PhD. My PhD advisor was left with all those. So what my my PhD work focused is I'm looking into arbusbular actually living in the roots, they were formed a tree like a beautiful structure called arbusbular actually living in the roots, they were formed a tree like a beautiful structure called el bosque, you're the frequency of those albacore show up and the intensity of their basket or, or even the size of them are a reflection of the nutrient exchange between the two partners. So what I did is we're we're collecting rock samples, both in the field and also in the greenhouse to clean it up, and then to stain the roots and a molded glass plate, and then to look under scope. So we could say how different treatment has effect, basically, the association of grapevines and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. But in addition to that, we'll look into plant grows, plant nutrient status and to track it during the season. And so in our list work, give us some idea about what happening. It's a big complicated puzzle and a wedge, I find it's really fascinating, but may allow it to make it a different area to study albacore. The frequency of those arbuscular show up and the intensity of their arbuscular or, or even the size of them are a reflection of the nutrient exchange between the two partners. So what I did is we're we're collecting root samples, both in the field and also in the greenhouse to clean it up, and then to stain the roots and mount it on a glass plate, and then to look under scope. So we could say how different treatment has effect, basically, the association of grapevines and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. But in addition to that, we'll look into plant grows, plant nutrient status and to track it during the season. And so in our list work, give us some idea about what happening. It's a big complicated puzzle and a which, I find it's really fascinating, but may allow it to make it a different area to study.   Craig Macmillan  9:01  Right, right. Right, right. This is a silly question, I guess. But there's no silly questions. So is it fair to say that more AMF is better for crop?   Dr Tian Tian  9:12  That's actually a really good question. We're trying to find the answer is not an optimal level. It's like wow, what my wines are 80% of the fine roots of my vine our colonized and away call it good. It's more complicated than that. If we're thinking about a question like this is first if you like you're in your vineyard, and you do your leaf petiol or leaf blade and nutrient test your phosphorus or has never been really a problem. So for us, that's an indication that the vines, the association between mycorrhizal and the grapevines are working and then so if that does not really work, and the way you're using the test you say a phosphorus is a probably mineral nutrient or tell you how good the bond is. And another thing is grapevine we consider it as a super host. They love AMF. So listen, it's how it happened is glorified probably pretty efficient in terms of fixed cover so they can afford to allocate those were like to contribute to the AMF to you know, to establish a good relationship. And another thing for plants is they need to consider if I give the carbon to the it's not that smart of the process, but that's how we think that's happened is the grapevine so will have a way to semi calculate how much carbon you get or how much things like nutrient you can get from that. So what they find is with the amount of carbohydrate they supply, and it's more efficient to allow the fungus to do the job to get the bio nutrients. And then there's other benefits off AMF is there whilst they occupied the cells and a lot of time the the pathogens are hard to get into the into the roots and to serve as a layer of protection. That is area more research is dive into under to say how good it works. So in general, I would think not exactly more AMF is better. Its the plant make it's a choice that based on the situation. But for other samples I have a look at in Oregon and the roots are colonized really well. With that being said, Oregon is an area where we have more radical soil where the availablity is relatively low. And so that's maybe why we say a really high colonization rate. I'm curious to see what happened California.   Yeah, absolutely. And that was leads to my next question is as far as we know right now what are the conditions that promote AMF populations?   Well we find is in general adding AMF is a different story if you're have you have no fumigation going on your vineyard is relatively healthy on a you don't run into other issues it is really not clear to us if you're inoculated certain you wouls day more beneficial AMF will lead to a better growth. That part of the data or is to your liking because if you apply to to the greenhouse it does not representing what happened in the field if you put in the field it is just really hard to do that you probably need to mix your soil with also inoculum right and and now there's a some product say you can mix it in the liquid and then there were significantly increase the amount of colonization but there's so many different ways to look at the fungus so it's added to a lot of vague area what we're gonna be doing. So but in general, what we're finding is if you have have legume as your cover crop legume is a host for AMF and so they're able to increase kind of both of the AMF population. So if you are thinking about to grow a new you establish a new vineyards and the you have the history nutrient limitation, I will just say use legume would be a good choice. And on the other hand mustard is not AMF host but it has been using cover crop some people were saying it's were released some of the compounds that were feter nemotodes so that's a totally different story. Yeah, so for me the best way it's not really add more AMF and the vine will bemore healthy. A lot of time what happened is in the vineyard there the vines and afff are both pretty happy and they have a good relationship. Actually we tried really hard to to increase nitrogen fertilization rate and able to shake that relationship a little bit so they're bonds are pretty tight and then it's if you are not running into a huge issue that is maybe it's the AMF inoculation and potential is low or that's a certain things in the vineyard and welcome to discuss that was me however interested know. And then the last thinkg that happens, you really it's I want to say most of the time, the AMF in your soil will be sufficient to help your vines to get the fully mobile nutrients like phosphorus, Zinc, copper from the soil.   Craig Macmillan  14:31  Are there ways that I can test to see whether I've hit that threshold?   Dr Tian Tian  14:37  There's a test you can run to see the inoculum potential and then just to say feel filled is a safe, but generally that is happens normally in a research lab. Yeah, there's not any commercial lab I know of there were collector root, route samples, because that's a tedious process. You're collecting the routes and the unit to pick only the fine routes, not all the woody roots you can, the AMF does not live there. Then you need to clean them really well, stain it at a look at it under the scope and evolve in like way, we have a great system and then to great how much the roots got colonized. So while the way we're used mostly to say where a problem occurred is look at leaf petiol and leaf blade, phosphorous status and I felt that's the most easiest way you can now if there's a problem. But the threshold if a nutrient is deficient or sufficient, that's another another topic.   Craig Macmillan  15:36  There's kind of a proxy variable there that I can actually look at my soil phosphorus, it's maybe not mobile, then I can then look at what the what the deficiencies are, sufficiency are in the vine and say, hey, you know, I'm guessing that I don't have a lot of mycorrhizal activity here. arbuscular mycorrhizal activity here because I'm not seeing that phosphorus moving, there's plenty there, but it's not moving into the plant. So that seems like a good kind of guide. What things can go or do if anything to encourage AMF in their soil? Assume its there, relationship with the grapevine. Maybe I'm not seeing the kind of transport that I think I would like to see which would make sense what can I do to help move that process along recurs as populations?   Dr Tian Tian  16:18  Okay, so that's kind of a dive into a really good question. So a lot of times, people weill think AMF is able to assess a different pool of phosphorus as compared to grapevine, that's really not true for AMF or they're assessing all the inorganic phosphorus in the soil. So a lot of times the availability of phosphorus in the soil is changing based on the soil pH if you have a really low pH soil you're probably outline prior to planting to bring up the pH and a like that. But there's no really a particular thinkg you're really do in the vineyard to bolster up the AMF population as long as you have a good canopy growth canopy create a couple of hydrate without carbohydrate AMF wont. It's it's a kind of both it's a fair market trade thing. If the grapevine is because in some of the experimental way wrong and the way keep the nitrogen rate really low so the vines are not really growing and we have say the arbuscular frequency in the fine roots are decreasing. Our understanding of that is so the grapevine says I tried really hard but I just cannot supply the carbohydrate you be happy with. So AMF just said okay, you know what I will do what I can do I'm not as happy as when you give me more but I will do what the job I can possibly offer right. Well you have a decent Canopy Growth and your nitrogen is kind of in the middle they reach you know a happy relationship is, yeah, you know what I am ready to share with my carbohydrate and AMF say okay, I'll give you the maximum benefits. But if you are in the vineyard you have really high nitrogen status which mainly happens in research not really I've noticed that you weren't dump a lot of nitrogen if that happens. And so the vines say maybe I have you know enough ability to grow the roots I think our be less dependent on AMF or the nitrogen you add in actually is regulating some part of AMF and AMF is okay, I feel my function our association our relationship is affected the cell that I decided to colonize les. So actually there's quite a bit of research going on to tease this apart out but so far we don't know which is a key part that is playing in terms of how AMF and the plants out there are regulating each other.   Craig Macmillan  18:44  So we know a little bit but we don't know if mentioned Oregon soils and so at this point, what do we know about AMF and soil and other particular soil that seems to do well and you find it more frequently here there's others were really shows up at all.   Dr Tian Tian  18:57  Yeah, well I was thinking about this question because when we're thinking about soil type that's including a lot of things the texture the pH the organic matter the so so I'm am still really learning about California to the soil here and then I haven't got to dive into the roots yet. So what happened in Oregon is there some more clay and loam soil there generally with AMF of the hyphae of the fungus are pretty powerful in terms of explore the soil and a few have little pore and the roots cannot grow and lead and the hyphae. So when we grow plants in the greenhouse where we have have soil and have sand and the AMF of colonization is about 75 to 95 even 100. And that is a similar to what we got from field where we have more clay loam soil. So I would say soil texture or soil type may have some effects, but I'm not so clear on how big the impact is. In terms of the lifecycle, or the impact of AMF I found the plants.   Craig Macmillan  20:04  So moving to California, welcome, very glad to have you as a farmer advisor in Kern County, and you've been doing some research here recently. That's kind of exciting. Would you want to tell us a little bit a little bit about that things related to nitrogen fertilization and things related to wind quality and nitrogen uptake? You've done some interesting stuff on that.   Dr Tian Tian  20:23  My Nitrogen work is also work I did in in Oregon, and my colleague, Dr. Matthew, Fidelibus in Cardiac Center, and he's doing more work in table grapes. Than they have a bigger project to find a more efficient way and easier way to look into plant to vine nutrient need and how you're going to fertilize. So for my work in Oregon, is to start with a simple question. If you want to add in nitrogen, should you add it in the vineyard or in the winery. Because nitrogen is a essential nutrient for the grapevines but also essential nutrients for the yeast, you can either adding nitrogen to the soil or to the foliage in the vineyard, or you can just keep the nitrogen low in the vineyard and then the added in the winery. And in the winery you can have a two form of nitrogen you can add a one is diammonium phosphate, and then or you can add organic and supplements like those those products and have a lot of people are selling. At the beginning of the research is we want to find a which one relates to about her wine quality in chardonnay and also in Pinot Noir. What previous work in Oregon what my PhD advisor Dr. Paul Schreiner did is he find that maintaining a low nitrogen status in Oregon vineyard is not a bad idea. The yield is less responsive to nitrogen status as compared to the canopy grows the vegetative growth, if you're changing nitrogen application rate, you're saying the response pretty significantly. And then so that is one benefits. And second is from the wines they made they point to the low nitrogen wise actually gave more floral aromas. And then the color is darker. So it's related to a better quality in the sense of you know, sensory and appearance of the wine and all those things. They think lower nitrogen may be the way to go. But that research is did in our research farm where they have put the device in 50 gallon big pots, so they can control the fertilization. It's not really a commercial production setting. So my PhD work is to focus on okay, let's think about that were to add in nitrogen and water to relate to. So what we actually find is adding nitrogen to the soil in the vineyard affected the wine sensory quality more than other treatments, where you've highlighted in the trial, and we say a more clear in fact, in shadow neck than Pinot Noir. The reason is not really a varietals, only varieties are different. It's also because the Chardonnay block where you'd have lower nitrogen depth status to start with. Yeah, so what we're finding is if you're adding nitrogen to the soil, and then the finish wine, the Chardonnay, we're have more tropical aroma, the pashion fruit trait that is a famous for sauvignon blanc producing New Zealand. So a lot of people like those more fruity drink wine, but if you wanted to Oak Chardonnay, and then to maintain a more, the winemaker calls it clean characteristics, and then data where bring more potential during the aging process. We say the soil aliance brings more the rather fruit characters, like a berry, like the cherry, and the plum, or it's kind of in that category, I need to go back to dive into my own notes. But what what generally we find is soil nitrogen application in the bigger cause and effect on the wine thatn foliar application in the vineyard or adding nitrogen in the winery.   Craig Macmillan  24:10  In a positive way?   Dr Tian Tian  24:11  Well, we were considered as winemaker can use it as a tool to make wines in a different style. So if you want your wines to be more fruity or have these and that characters, there's a something you could do just kind of just other just a practice you're already using in the vineyard and to achieve that.   Craig Macmillan  24:31  You talked about two topics here. And so I'm gonna ask the same question regarding the kind of both of them is it what is the one thing that you would advise or would recommend to a grape grower regarding AMF and maybe soil health just kind of in general?   Dr Tian Tian  24:46  Wow. Theres so many things. But in general what I, I have been thinking about this question a lot because now soil health is a big topic, no matter whichever area would dive into and not only grower, consumer wants to have a fruit a coming from, a vineyard that is more sustainable operated. One advice I would have is adding organic matter back to this compost is good. There's a lot of things, it does not need to be so fancy. And it'll work kind of increase the if organic matter basically adding food to the soil microbe microbial community, right, there's different parts, and each of them are playing a role. And we do a lot of bio genome kind of study, who is there, but what they're doing is a series of things we don't know. And so that is a good thing. And the second is, so I'm only allowed to say one thing?   Craig Macmillan  25:47  Go ahead and say a second thing.   Dr Tian Tian  25:51  Okay. So the second thing I always think is just look at do your leaf petiol or blade, nutrient. The threshold stablished by research. That's a lot of work into it, but it is representing a limited number of vineayrd. If you have a record for your own vineyard, you want to feel more comfortable about how you manage the nutrition.   Craig Macmillan  26:15  Now that said, just do one thing I'm going to now I have to ask a follow up question. What's your recommendation for how to add organic matter? What do you think are the best ways to do that?   Dr Tian Tian  26:24  Well, a good question. Actually, I was thinking about I would dive more into that as a research trial. So a lot of growers in our region do, they were just lay on the compost kind of on the surface around the vine. So there's a benefit is actually like, yeah, slowly releasing fertilizer. But some people will say add the planting, you can incorporate it into the soil a little bit, or even after planting, you can incorporate it into the soil. Yes, you're improve part of the roots, but you're also adding nutrients back to the soil where the roots can easily access. The answer is I'm not so sure what is a best idea. And also, now they have a liquid for an organic fertilizer on the market and so there is another way other than to use a compost, there's another form of fertilizer you can add and that is organic certified and then provide organic matter to the soil.   Craig Macmillan  27:16  Now going back to nitrogen, what is one thing that you would recommend to grape grower regarding their nitrogen management?   Dr Tian Tian  27:23  Oh, okay, monitored closely, and they don't fertilize too much. But as of this year, the fertilizer price is increased to 30 to 40%. I think over fertilization is really not an option. But it's more like I feel growers like to take care of babies, you'll you look at their needs, and then you you know, you do the physical exam, to understand what's happening, and then you'll fertilize it based on that. Block to block may be different. And the variety to a variety can be different. And then the more you know about them, and then the more you can help them to gather to the level of of canopy growth and the fruit quality you're shooting for.   Craig Macmillan  28:05  And that's gonna have everything to do with taking those petiol and leaf blade samples and keeping records and then comparing them to what your outcomes are.   Dr Tian Tian  28:13  Not only that, it's also including looking at the vineyard and to walk through to to look at the canopy. If you're thinking about a petiol nutrient test, they're testing concentration, right, and then the threshold established our concentration. But how the concentration of those nutrients is decided by the canopy size. Okay, the vine grows, have some ideas on aware, research are looking into easier ways to monitor in vine rows so you can compare a year to a year. And a lot of times it catches the onset of the problem is really important. And then we're always learning I feel agriculture is a learning business. Every year we'll learn something new and next year we're doing something better.   Craig Macmillan  28:58  That is very wise. Where can people find out more about you and your work?   Dr Tian Tian  29:02  Welcome to visit the UCC Kern website and then also feel free you can find my email my phone there and then feel free to call or email and I'm happy to help if there's any anything I could do to make your life happier and you will be happier.   Craig Macmillan  29:18  And then we will have links to those things in the show notes. I want to thank our guest today Dr. Tian Tian Viticulture Farm Advisor, Cooperative Extension, Kern County UC Cooperative Extension, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. And thank you for sharing your knowledge. I think you're gonna be a real benefit to the region. And we really appreciate you having this job.   Dr Tian Tian  29:35  Thank you. That is a so fun to chat about my research work and all those interesting things. The grape world is happening.   Craig Macmillan  29:44  It is a really, really fun and I think that's why people like this podcast, especially me, this is so much fun for me. Anyway, enough about that, you know, thank you so much.   Dr Tian Tian  29:55  Thanks for having me.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Today on Mushroom Hour we are host to the distinguished Dr. Kabir Peay – head of Stanford University's Peay Lab. Dr. Peay completed a master's degree at the Yale School of Forestry and Environment Science (F&ES) in 2003 and obtained a PhD in 2008 from UC Berkeley's Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM) in Matteo Garbelotto's lab. He completed postdoctoral training at UC Berkeley in the Dept. of Plant & Microbial Biology with Tom Bruns, and at Stanford in the Dept. of Biology with Tadashi Fukami. He was an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota from 2011-2012 before coming to Stanford in 2012 to join the Dept. of Biology in his current position. The Peay lab studies the ecological processes that structure natural communities and the links between community structure and the cycling of nutrients and energy through ecosystems - focusing on fungi! Much of the research focuses on plant-fungal root associations, better known as mycorrhizas, which constitute one of the most pervasive mutualisms in terrestrial ecosystems. By integrating their lines of research, they hope to weave together a 'roots-to-biomes' understanding of plant-microbe symbiosis.   TOPICS COVERED:   A Love of Nature, Inspiration in the East   From Environmental Consulting into Ecological Understanding   Discovering Fungal Symbioses   Defining Ecology & Community Assembly   Understanding Scale in Community Ecology    Embracing Fungi in All of Their Ecological Roles   Facultative Capacities of Fungi   Mycorrhizal Lessons in Community Ecology    Broadening Ecological Perspectives Beyond Purely Competitive Frameworks   MISSPs & Mediating Mycorrhizal Interactions   Fungal Biogeography   Ecological Succession & Stages of Community Assembly   Future of Mycorrhizal Research   Mapping Fungal Genes to Ecological Functions   EPISODE RESOURCES:   Peay Lab Academic Website: https://mykophile.stanford.edu/   Dr. Peay Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=E6GRsP4AAAAJ&hl=en   Dipterocarpaceae - tree family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipterocarpaceae   Chytrids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycota   Pinus ponderosa (tree species): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_ponderosa   Suilllus pungens (fungus species): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suillus_pungens    

We often talk about diversity above-ground in prairie ecosystems, but this week we'll be going underground to uncover the role of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in the success of prairie reconstructions.

Today on the Mushroom Hour we are honored to be joined by Dr. Andrew Wilson - Assistant Curator of Mycology in the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi at Denver Botanic Gardens. For Dr. Wilson the discovery of mycology began back in the late 90's at San Francisco State University in taking classes from world renown mushroom taxonomist, Dr. Dennis Desjardin. Working with Dennis, Andrew earned a Masters degree studying the mushroom genus Gymnopus from Java and Bali. He later went on to earn a PhD in the lab of Dr. David Hibbett at Clark University. His project took him back to Southeast Asia, this time to study the ecology and evolution enigmatic puffball genus Calostoma and their relatives. In 2009, Andrew graduated and began a postdoc with Dr. Gregory Mueller at the Chicago Botanic Garden where he explored the systematic evolution of the Cantharellales and the model ectomycorrhizal mushroom genus Laccaria. He also did a one-year postdoc at Purdue University, in the lab of Dr. Cathie Aime, teasing apart the complex evolution of plant pathogenic rust fungi. At Denver Botanic Gardens, Dr. Wilson is working on a regional contribution to the Fungal Diversity Survey (FunDiS) that encompasses the state of Colorado, with a focus on the Southern Rockies. In this effort he is training students on how to study biodiversity using natural history collection and DNA sequence analysis. He is also working on new tools in DNA sequencing to better sample and study fungal diversity.   TOPICS COVERED:   Formed in a Family of Biologists   Intellectual Explorations at San Francisco State University   Genus Gymnopus   Expeditions to Southeast Asia   What are Systematics?   Genus Calostoma   Role of Isotopes in Understanding Fungal Ecologies   Biogeographic Histories of Fungi   Interpreting Ancestry and Evolution in Phylogenetic Data    Gondwana Supercontinent   Finding a Living, Ancient Ancestor on the Lacarria Family Tree    Denver Botanic Gardens & Sam Mitchell Fungi Herbarium   New Methods of High-Throughput DNA Sequencing    Biodiversity & Evolutionary History of Southern Rocky Mountain Fungi   EPISODE RESOURCES:   Dr. Andrew Wilson - Denver Botanic Gardens: https://www.botanicgardens.org/team/profile/andrew-w-wilson-phd   Dr. Dennis Desjardin (Mentor): https://biology.sfsu.edu/faculty/desjardin   Dr. David Hibbet (Mentor): https://www2.clarku.edu/faculty/facultybio.cfm?id=355   Gymnopus (Genus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnopus   Calostoma (Genus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calostoma   Laccaria (Genus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laccaria   Calostoma cinnabarinum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calostoma_cinnabarinum   Colorado Mycological Society: https://cmsweb.org/   Colorado Mycoflora Project: https://coloradomycoflora.org/   

As fictional Santa Fe Institute chaos mathematician Ian Malcolm famously put it, “Life finds a way” — and this is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than by roots: seeking out every opportunity, improving in their ability to access and harness nutrients as they've evolved over the last 400 million years. Roots also exemplify another maxim for living systems: “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” As the Earth's climate has transformed, the plants and fungi have transformed along with it, reaching into harsh and unstable environments and proving themselves in a crucible of evolutionary innovation that has reshaped the biosphere. Dig deep enough and you'll find that life, like roots, trends toward the ever-finer, more adaptable, more intertwined…we all live in and on Charles Darwin's “tangled bank”, whether we recognize it in our farms, our markets, or our minds.Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I'm your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we'll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on Complexity, we talk to SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Mingzhen Lu (Google Scholar, Twitter) about the lessons of the invisible webwork beneath our feet, the hidden world upon which all of us walk and rely — largely unnoticed, and until recently scarcely understood. We discuss the intersection of geography, ecology, and economics; the relationship between the so-called “Wood-Wide Web” and urban systems; how plants domesticated mycorrhizal fungi much as humans domesticated animals and plants; the evolutionary trends revealed by a paleoecological study of roots and what they suggest for the future of technology and civilization… This episode is an especially intertwingled and far-reaching one, as suits the topic. Plant yourself and soak it up!If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe to Complexity Podcast wherever you prefer to listen, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and/or consider making a donation at santafe.edu/give. You'll find plenty of other ways to engage with us at santafe.edu/engage.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInDiscussed in this episode:“Evolutionary history resolves global organization of root functional traits”by Zeqing Ma, Dali Guo, Xingliang Xu, Mingzhen Lu, Richard D. Bardgett, David M. Eissenstat, M. Luke McCormack & Lars O. Hedinin Nature“Global plant-symbiont organization and emergence of biogeochemical cycles resolved by evolution-based trait modelling”by Mingzhen Lu, Lars O. Hedinin PubMed“Biome boundary maintained by intense belowground resource competition in world's thinnest-rooted plant community”by Mingzhen Lu, William J. Bond, Efrat Sheffer, Michael D. Cramer, Adam G. West, Nicky Allsopp, Edmund C.  February,  Samson Chimphango, Zeqing Ma, Jasper A. Slingsby, and Lars O. Hedinin PNASComplexity ep. 8 - Olivia Judson on Major Energy Transitions in Evolutionary HistoryA (Very) Short History of Life on Earthby Henry Gee (Senior Editor of Nature)"General statistical model shows that macroevolutionary patterns and processes are consistent with Darwinian gradualism”by SFI Professor Mark Pagelin NatureComplexity ep. 29 - On Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David Krakauer“Childhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensions”by SFI Professor Alison Gopnikin Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society BComplexity ep. 35 - Scaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey WestComplexity ep. 17 - Chris Kempes on The Physical Constraints on Life & EvolutionComplexity ep. 60 - Andrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 1: Humboldt's NaturegemäldeDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?by Philip K. DickThe Shock Doctrineby Naomi KleinDoughnut Economicsby Kate RaworthThe Long Descentby John Michael Greer“6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save The World”by Paul StametsComplexity ep. 43 - Vicky Yang & Henrik Olsson on Political Polling & Polarization: How We Make Decisions & IdentitiesThe Expanse (novel series)by James S. A. Corey (Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck, here at IPFest 2019 on our World Building panel)