Tiny Fungi May Hold Big Answers for Our Planet

I have a fungal infection. 

Before you jump to any conclusions, perhaps I should rephrase. 

I have a fungal obsession. And have for many years. 

As a teenager I used to get up early to go to the local market in Turkey to buy the freshly harvested wild mushrooms to put on my toast. And at one point I was producing over a ton of oyster mushrooms every week off nothing more than residues from crops I collected for free around my neighborhood in Colombia. But I digress. 

My obsession has come to peak because the fungal world just keeps getting more relevant. In particular, mycorrhiza – fungi that form partnerships with plant roots – are turning out to be some of nature’s biggest problem-solvers. And, having now learnt to spell mycorrhiza, I’m going to flex and not only spell it correctly, but also wax lyrical about why we should all be obsessed by them. 

It turns out that nature invented carbon markets 457 million years ago.

Long before we humans created abstract trading of carbon through complicated financial instruments, nature already had all the answers. Carbon has been exchanged for millennia through billions, or, more likely, trillions of micro-transactions on a daily basis in the ground where mycorrhizal networks give plants nutrients in exchange for carbon. These vast subterranean superhighways are essentially merchants of carbon, moving molecules at remarkable speed in their symbiotic relationship with plant roots.

This week we are announcing a collaboration with the wonderfully named Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN). SPUN is an NGO dedicated to discovering and conserving fungal biodiversity around the world. 

It’s astounding how little we understand about the diversity of fungal communities. 

Our particular work with SPUN is looking at deep soil carbon. While we know that mycorrhizal communities move carbon around, the further down in the soil we go, the less we know about deep soil carbon placement. SPUN will look to discover the fungal communities which go deep in soil, and explore how we might harness them to boost carbon sequestration.

More and more, as I explore the future of food, I realize that the biggest problems on our planet seemingly can be solved with the smallest and most invisible organisms to our human eyes. It turns out that it’s not cows that generate methane, but tiny bacteria called Archaea spp. that populate their stomachs. Microbes and micro-algae seem to hold many solutions to the production of protein. And now, fungal communities hidden beneath our feet may hold the solution to boosting soil carbon.

So next time you’re out in nature, take a moment to look down and think about what’s happening beneath your feet – an underground world bursting with life that could shape the future of our planet. 

The fungi down there are already hard at work, but it’s up to us to give them the support they need. 

And hey, if you feel inspired, practice spelling mycorrhiza – it might come in handy when you’re writing someone else to tell them about these amazing networks.