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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Mycorrhizal fungi; plant helpers

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  • From: Lee Reich <lreich@hvc.rr.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Mycorrhizal fungi; plant helpers
  • Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 11:42:46 -0400

I'd like to add something important that perhaps needs more emphasis to Lon's article: Mycorrhiza are, for the most part, ubiquitous. In most cases, the human "hand" is not needed to promote mycorrhizae. Virtually all plants, with the exception of some families, such as the cabbage family, get infected under normal conditions.

Perhaps the main thing that we humans need to do to promote this truly amazing, beneficial association of plants and fungi by not doing anything to thwart it. Such as not drenching soils with pesticides. Generally, conditions favorable to plant roots -- good aeration, moisture, etc. -- will also be favorable to the formation of mycorrhizae.

In some few cases, of course, plants benefit from deliberate inoculation with mycorrhizae-forming fungi. One example would be where plants have been introduced into areas into which that family or species has never grown, such as blueberries in Australia.)

But generally, the fungi best suited to the existing conditions will already be present. The most suitable fungi depends, to some degree on the existing soil conditions, climate conditions, and probably a number of other site-specific conditions. It seems like hubris to imagine that dowsing a soil with a few species of fungi isolated in a laboratory and then packaged for sale is going to do better than what's going on already in a soil that hasn't been mistreated. Just another something to sell.

P.S. Many reports of the benefits from deliberate inoculations compare inoculated soils with those that have been sterilized. The comparison should be inoculated vs non-inoculated soils.

Lee Reich, PhD

Books by Lee Reich:
A Northeast Gardener's Year
The Pruning Book
Weedless Gardening
Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden
Landscaping with Fruit






On Apr 7, 2010, at 3:50 PM, Douglas Woodard wrote:

Lon Rombough's excellent introduction to this important topic:

<http://www.bunchgrapes.com/mycorrhiza.html>

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
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