#mycorrhiza

[dougielombax]

The Fungus Humungous.

[jazzbeary]

Fungi: mycelium

Plants:

[xxanonymessxx]

To continue my art dump....

[mycoblogg]

Hello! I see you use the word "mycorrhizal" often, what does it mean?

a "mycorrhiza" refers to a symbiotic relationship between fungi & green plants. a mycorrhizal association will occur when a fungus plays a role in a plant's root system.

"in a mycorrhizal association, the fungus colonizes the host plant's root tissues, either intracellularly as in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, or extracellularly as in ectomycorrhizal fungi. the association is normally mutualistic. in particular species, or in particular circumstances, mycorrhizae may have a parasitic association with host plants."

you can read more about it here (link) !! <3

[oriyamiryu]

“Mycorrhiza”

[jackalgirl]

The Social Life of Forests

Trees appear to communicate and cooperate through subterranean networks of fungi. What are they sharing with one another?

It’s behind a paywall, but I find that if your computer/phone has a “reader view” option, you can read it that way.  Or you can just go straight to some juicy research: “Mycorrhizal networks: Mechanisms, ecology and modeling”.

Anyway, the gist of this is what Dr. Simard’s (and her team’s) extraordinary work has shown is that forests and prairies could be more properly thought of as super-organisms, linked together through a mycorrhizal network (a symbiotic relationship with fungus which forms threadlike connections) through which plants can exchange not only elements like phosphorus, carbon and oxygen, water and hormones.  The resources generally get shared from older to younger plants and is sometime seasonal*, which is why after clearcutters razed entire chunks of forests and planted spaced-out monoculture saplings, they’d find that a surprisingly large percentage of the new plantings would die and the others wouldn’t thrive so well either.  

* In one example, fir trees shaded in the summer received nutrients from the deciduous trees. In winter, when the deciduous trees had lost their leaves and the fir trees were getting all of that lovely sunlight, the flow was reversed.

In my “The Outer Worlds” headcannon (the story is called “The Journeyman”), this is why the agriculture in Halcyon has largely crashed.  It’s because all the people who really understand mycorrhizal networks (especially Arbuscular mycorrhiza aka “AMF”) are still asleep in the Hope.  They were supposed to get there and pick up after the initial colonists got things started, monitor the initial mycorrhizal terraforming and make sure the network had taken, give it boosters, ensure the plant stock was sufficient to support it, study the development of an Earth mycorrhizal network in a newly terraformed environment, etc.  

But instead, the initial settlers -- although they did follow the instructions and get things started -- didn’t really know how to monitor its status or encourage its development, and the corporations have always prioritized short-term production over long-term sustainability anyway, so eventually the AMF crashed.  It’s still there, just not particularly effective.  This is why Terra 2 is so incredibly green and lush (its own native systems are just fine, thank you very much) but Earth crops won’t grow as well (they grow, just not enough to truly sustain the colonial population).  And this is the source of Adelaide’s success: it’s not because of how she’s feeding the soil in the botanical lab, it’s because of the soil itself: the soil in the botanical lab still has a fully-developed and thriving AMF network, as it was never (over-) used for farming.

Pro-tip for Martian colonists: don’t forget to take some AMF with you.

[adarrenxinyi]

What’s the function of Mycorrhiza?

Expand the nutrient absorption surface of plants

The roots of plants are important organs for plants to absorb water and other nutrients. However, due to various external factors, the growth of roots is still limited to a certain extent, such as hard soil texture, drought and water shortage, which will affect to a certain extent. Absorption of water and nutrients. The epithetized hyphae are hyphae that grow outward from the surface of the plant roots and grow far beyond the roots of the plants. Even in places where the roots of the plants cannot reach, there will be traces of epithelial hyphae, which greatly increases the absorption surface and absorption range of the roots of the plants, thus helping the plants absorb more water and other nutrients.

Mycorrhiza increases the absorption of phosphorus by plants

Phosphorus is the least easily decomposed and flowing element. The majority of phosphorus in soil is poorly soluble phosphorus and cannot be directly absorbed by plants. Therefore, during the growth of plants, the available phosphorus around the roots is quickly absorbed, and the peripheral phosphorus is difficult to replenish rapidly, resulting in a small range of “phosphorus-depleted areas” around the roots of the plants. It is easy to produce phosphorus deficiency. However, once the plant has mycorrhiza, a large number of epithelial hyphae can cross the phosphorus-poor zone and absorb phosphorus, water and other nutrients from farther places, thus partially meeting the growth requirements of the plant.

Mycorrhiza produces auxin

During the growth process, ectomycorrhizal fungi can produce a variety of growth substances that stimulate plant growth, such as auxin, cytodinin, gibberellius, and vitamin B1. Acetic acid (IAA), etc. Therefore, when these species are symbiotic with plants, they will inevitably affect plants and promote the growth of plants. The growth hormone secreted by mycorrhizal fungi plays an important role in regulating plant nutrition, accelerating the transportation and flow of substances, promoting the differentiation and growth of plants and their roots, and accelerating the formation of chlorophyll.

Enhance plant disease resistance

Many studies have shown that some ectomycorrhizal fungi have obvious “antagonistic” effects on certain plant pathogenic bacteria. Therefore, the use of ectomycorrhizal fungi to control certain plant diseases has become a new approach to control the plant diseases in recent years. In addition, many studies have also shown that mycorrhiza can also improve other stress resistance of plants, such as drought resistance, cold resistance, salt and alkali resistance, and heavy metal pollution.

Improve the rhizosphere environment of plants

The results show that the activity of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil directly or indirectly affects the rhizosphere environment of the plant, and the changes in the rhizosphere environment will affect the population structure and activities of the rhizosphere microorganisms, and further affect the roots of the plants. Nutritional absorption.

Using the modern electron probe technology to study the surface of mycorrhiza, it was found that the “adhesive layer” on the root surface of Pinus taeda and Pinus elliottii roots greatly exceeded the sterile root seedlings, which is 2-3 times of the sterile root seedlings; The enlargement of the adhesive layer is the expansion of the ion exchange area of the plant roots, that is, the exchange, absorption, storage and transportation of nutrients by the root system is increased, thereby facilitating the growth of plants.

More info of Mycorrhiza

[alithographica]

Science Fact Friday Week 2: Fungi!

Had to do a little pen & ink mushroom for class this week so fungi has been on my mind. Managed to finish it early enough to feature it here! I love stippling.

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