A new study pinpoints a major carbon pool in the filament networks of mycorrhizal fungi found underneath mushrooms
BIOLOGY
Powerful fungal networks hidden underground are storing some of humanity’s carbon emissions, and could help us lock away even more if we protect them, according to a new study.
Researchers from the UK, South Africa and the Netherlands have revealed that plants absorb an estimated 13 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) from the atmosphere annually and deposit them in mycorrhizal fungi in the soil. The amount of carbon being allocated to these networks is equivalent to 36 per cent of annual global fossil fuel emissions.
Mycorrhizal fungi form mutually beneficial partnerships – known as symbiotic relationships – with the roots of plants. The fungi supply the plants with nutrients that are essential for the plant’s growth and, in return, take some of the sugars that the plants produce through photosynthesis, as well as the carbon dioxide they absorb in the process.
“Understandably, much focus has been placed on protecting and restoring forests as a natural way to mitigate climate change,” said Dr Heidi Hawkins, research associate on plant-soil-microbe interactions at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and one of the study’s authors.
“But little attention has been paid to the fate of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide that are moved from the atmosphere during photosynthesis by those plants and sent below ground to mycorrhizal fungi.”
Scientists have known for a long time that these fungi form symbiotic relationships with plants, but only in recent years have they discovered that these relationships also act as the gateway for carbon to enter the soil. The study published in Current Biology estimates just how much carbon the plant
