The New York Times
In a Food Revolution, Fungi as Comrades
As Justin Gillis reported this week in The Times, some experts suggest that the world is in need of a new agricultural revolution.
In the face of climate change, environmental degradation and dwindling reserves of essential fertilizer components like phosphate, many believe that the innovations of the 20th century’s Green Revolution will not suffice to feed the growing global population for long. Phosphate is a finite resource in high demand, predicted to run out within the next 50 to 100 years, and this has led some countries to stockpile the compound, banning its export and driving elevated prices even higher.
Ian Sanders, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, believes that fungi are part of the answer.
He works with mycorrhizal fungi, which live in symbiosis with many plant species, including vital agricultural crops like rice, potatoes and cassava.
Dwelling in the roots, the fungi help plants draw in phosphate, an essential nutrient for growth, from reluctant soils in which the chemical is often tightly bound; at the same time, the fungi increase a plant’s resistance to drought and certain pathogens.
While these fungi were discovered nearly 40 years ago, Dr. Sanders is among the first researchers to systematically study their effects on agriculture in the developing world. He experiments by increasing soil concentrations of the fungus and tapping into its natural genetic variations, selectively crossing different lines to produce mycorrhizal fungus that can increase rice crop yields, for example, by up to five times.
In collaboration with scientists at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá and with Mycovitro, a small Spanish biotech company that pioneered the technique of growing the mycorrhizal fungus and suspending it in high concentrations in a gel, the group has been conducting promising field tests in Colombia.
In one experiment, the researchers were able to halve the amount of phosphate applied to fields while maintaining the same crop yield, drastically reducing the environmental effect of the fertilizer as well as costs. (Phosphates cause algal blooms when runoff ends up in waterways, leading to hypoxia, or such low oxygen levels in the water that many aquatic species die.)
“One Coke bottle of this gel has the potential to replace a field’s worth of fertilizer,” Dr. Sanders said.
While field experiments continue in South America, the research group is also working to collect samples of other fungi to test for potential uses with a range of crops in varying soil types. Dr. Sanders is hoping to form a partnership with the Agency of International Development and begin similar trials in West Africa.
Among the next steps are seeking out companies in the developing world that could produce the gel locally and conducting more extensive studies on how increasing the concentration of one species of fungus affects the diversity of local microbial communities.
