| Muck and Mystery Loitering With Intent |
blog - at - crumbtrail.org |
Philip Small posts on a theme that has fascinated me for some time.
The current round of research into soil microbial life holds the door open onto insights that stagger the imagination. . .Phillip notes the discovery in the mid 1990s of the huge significance of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (AM) fungi for nutrient transport and carbon cycling in soil, and likens the magnitude of these new discoveries to AM. . . or more so.The following was reported earlier today in What's New in Science and Technology.
Ironically, in the diversity of soil bacteria, the otherwise species-rich Amazon is a more like a desert, while the arid desert is a teeming microbial Amazon, researchers have found. Their first-ever continental-scale genetic survey of soil bacteria revealed that the primary factor that seems to govern the diversity of soil bacteria is soil pH. Thus, the acidic soils of topical forests harbor fewer bacterial species than the neutral soils of deserts.As exciting as these studies are, they are tentative and simplistic in comparison to the dynamic they reveal. These results are the product of capacity building needed before the real work can begin.The researchers said that, since soil bacteria play a fundamental role in a vast array of ecological processes, their survey constitutes an initial step in a new research pathway to understanding that role.
See Nitrogen Transport, Phosphorus Transport, Mycorrhizosphere, Dirt Glue, and Hack the Spew for some earlier posts that touch on these issues.
There's money to be made by decoding the mycorrhizosphere. Growing truffles in a mycobag would pay better than ps. mexicana sclerota, and Uncle Whiskers'd be willing to accept your taxes. As a matter of fact, a lot people doing the research got their start growing magic mushrooms.
Posted by: triticale at January 10, 2006 11:31 PMOne of the creative uses being made of old and abandoned packing houses around here is to use them for growing shrooms.
They are huge, climate controlled structures - good for optimizing growing conditions - but have no lighting systems such as are needed for greenhouses. Shrooms don't need light so that's not a problem.
And with all the other packing houses and dairies around there's a good supply of stuff for shrooms to eat. Some of them even like wood so there's a market for orchard prunings and oak from the foothills. That's a competitive market these days though since folks want firewood more than ever with the high price of natural gas and propane.
Posted by: back40 at January 10, 2006 11:59 PM