How Mycorrhizal Fungi Help Plants Access Water and Nutrients

0:07 Ever see what I have here on the screen? This is a picture that I took in the heat of the summer drought of the year 2012. You can see obviously there's dead corn next to green growing native grass. This is a river bottom field and you can see the corn is closer to the river and where the photo was taken was a gravel hilltop with very poor water holding capacity, but the native grass is still green and the corn is dead.

0:53 The first thing people tell me is that the native grass has this huge monstrous root system that's able to extract moisture, while corn has a very small root system, and that's true. But if that were the only explanation, explain to me why the only green corn in this entire field is the row right next to the native grass. If it's the only explanation that this native grass has a huge root system that's able to extract water, shouldn't this row of corn right here have been the first corn in the field to die instead of the only surviving corn?

1:42 What is going on here? Well, if you could dig up those roots on that corn or the native grass, what you would find is that those roots are colonized with all these little threads. This is mycorrhizal fungi—a beneficial fungus that colonizes plant roots. It's supposed to be on just about every plant in a land. It's found in native ecosystems like the native grasses that I showed you, but it tends to be missing from our crop ground. We'll talk more about that later, but this fungus, unlike a parasitic fungus, is a beneficial fungus that helps the plant do a lot of things.

2:26 Most of our crop plants are colonized by mycorrhizal fungi. You can see that basically all grasses, most of our broadleaf plants, most of our fruit and nut crops are colonized by mycorrhizal fungi. This is an organism that can convey benefits to an awful lot of plants.

2:50 Then there are some plants that do not respond to mycorrhizae fungi. You see that a lot of these, although we do have some crops in here, we also have a lot of weed species—smartweeds, pigweeds, lambsquarters—do not respond to mycorrhizae fungi.

3:15 Now the difference between plants that are colonized with mycorrhizal fungi and ones that are not: these are root hairs on a corn root system, and these are a few millimeters long at best. Mycorrhizal hyphae can extend up to 18 to 24 inches away from those roots. So instead of a few millimeters that that plant can access water away from the root system, a colonized plant with mycorrhizal fungi can access up to two feet past the root system. That's a huge increase in the ability to access water and nutrients.

3:58 So what does mycorrhizal fungi do for the plant? One of the first benefits is an increase in root mass. Here are some corn plants, and you can see a very small root system here, and on the inoculated control, much, much bigger root system. That's one benefit: improved root colonization. Of course, if you have bigger roots, you're going to have access to more water in the soil.

4:28 Here's a study done at University of Wisconsin River Falls, and you can see they took inoculated corn plants and corn without mycorrhizal fungi, deprived them of water, and measured the days until each plant died. The inoculated plants lasted 30% longer. You can see here's a photo from a field, side-by-side untreated plants, treated plants quite a bit better, bigger.

5:05 Another thing is faster crop establishment because the mycorrhizal hyphae can grow much faster than what the root system of a plant can. It can access more water, more nutrients, put more energy into growth because those hyphae are able to do a lot of what the root system is unable to do in their receiving stage. We see this picture from the now alpha.

5:31 Field in Arizona treated untreated, big difference in how fast that crop establish. The biggest differences in establishment rate will be on perennial crops like alfalfa, native grass, fruit trees—big difference in perennial crops, but also a difference in annual crops as well.

5:51 Reduction of disease pressure is another one. The reason this is—and maybe you can make this out—you can see this is plant tissue here, there's the conductive tissue of the root, and this layer here is fungal tissue from the mycorrhizal. It coats that root with a layer of chitin. Chitin is a polysaccharide protein complex, is not found in plant tissue, only in fungal tissue and a few other organisms. It's essentially the same thing that makes up the shells of crabs and lobsters. Fish pathogens that attack root cells don't have the chitinase enzyme that it takes to break through this layer, so it's really kind of a protective coating. It's like Rhino coat for your plant roots—just hardens it up and protects it from those root attacking pathogens.

6:54 Reduction in nematode pressure—a lot of that is due to the same chitin protective layer. Now, some people have worse nematode problems than others. Tend to have sandy soil—has worsening the two problems irrigated, so else a long times, reverb bottoms because of the way the nematode eggs are spread during flood events—often times have worse nematode issues. Some crops are affected more by nematodes—motors things like sugar beets, potatoes, root crops are particularly affected by nematodes. There are even some mycorrhizal organisms like this one that has these little green white structures, and these exude a pheromone that I guess you'd say is like a Axe body wash for nematodes—very emits of scent that nematodes find irresistible. And they will try to swim through this loop, and when it does, it triggers this loop to swell up like an inner tube.

7:57 Catch that nematode and once that nematode is trapped this thing will shoot root-like structures called historia into the nematode, inject it with digestive enzymes and feed it, dissolve it, kill it, dissolve it, render it into plant nutrients and transfer it down this mycorrhizae and into the plant. So it turns that pest into fertilizer. What a slick deal. Now this organism is not yet commercially available but it will be at some point in time.

8:32 Of course one of the biggest functions of roots is nutrient uptake. In a colonized plant is going to have better nutrient uptake. Here's a study and you can see this is on wheat. And look at this, here's without mycorrhizae and without phosphorus fertilizer. Here's where they added phosphorus fertilizer, you get a little bit of nutrient uptake improvement. But this is mycorrhizae without phosphorus fertilizer. Mycorrhizae actually did better job than the fertilizer did. And when you add the two together it's better yet.

9:11 Mycorrhizae actually helps benefit the uptake of all kinds of nutrients, not just phosphorus. But you look at what this is doing, control versus the mycorrhizae, double. Now a little bit better, about 50% better, roughly double, almost four times more zinc, almost three times the copper, all 50% more manganese, almost double the iron. I mean there's, this is not only good for the plant. But what do we do with this plant, we eat it. This is improving the quality of nutrition.

9:53 And if you've been following studies on nutrient density of plants over the years, the nutrient density of our crops and our produce has been declining alarmingly over the past few decades. The reintroduction of mycorrhizal fungi to our crops can help make a more nutrient-dense, healthier plant. And that not only helps the plant.

10:16 That helps the animals or the people that eat those puns if it sounded like a late-night infomercial for this. I mean, this is like ShamWow. I mean, it just does everything. There's more if you ordered for midnight tonight we will throw in improve soil structure. The hyphy of mycorrhizal fungi secrete a lubricant called Glo Malin that is a very powerful soil aggregating agent. It has a much, much longer half-life in the soil than other soil aggregating agents. Humic acid or fulvic acid last several times longer, much more persistent and much more effective.

11:09 Here is over here is an inoculated oat plant. This is taking about 75 days after planting. This one was not inoculated. Notice how much darker this is, how much better aggregate that soil is. This one just melted away, that was just falling away. This, the soil clung to the root system. We just visibly better had that black cottage cheese appearance that you really want in the soil. So it's a much, much more desirable. And this happened in just 75 days. That's really pretty amazing to me how much improvement we got in a very short period of time. And that soil and these plants were plucked about three feet apart, just on either side and the treatment line.

11:54 This is a picture, a microscope picture and a little pit of soil, little tiny clawed, and the glow Malin has been treated so that it glows under ultraviolet light. So all this glow in the dark stuff you see, maybe you can see the little hyphy here, and the glow Malin is richer around the Heike. This is the glue that literally holds the soil together. And you also get organic matter content. This is the soil carbon with and without mycorrhizal inoculation. This is the soil bare soil growing nothing. This is sort of the same soil with tall fescue in it. And you would expect that this would have a lot more carbon in it, but remember for plants to improve, plants.

12:51 Alone to improve your soil carbon content they have to die and decay but when you have mycorrhizal fungi out there they are exhuming low Mahlon into the soil and making soil organic matter while the plants. That's very very important you can get soil improvement from a cover crop a cash crop can be improving the soil as well at the same time that plants growing you don't have to wait for death and decay for all that soil improvement to happen.

13:20 And the hyphy yeah, here this is all these things here are beneficial bacteria these are beneficial rice rhizosphere organisms that enhance the growth of plants they fight off diseases these things will go out and eat rock particles in and make the nutrients in them available to other plants when you inoculate a plant with mycorrhizal fungi it'll have about a thousand times more of these beneficial bacteria compared to a none colonized plant that's huge especially as we start to figure out what the roles of some of these microorganisms are and learn how to manipulate them a little better take advantage of all the processes that they can do.

14:15 This is the next frontier in agriculture I really believe that rather than some space-age magic that we're going to develop the next frontier in agriculture will be understanding the natural processes that take place in that rhizosphere and how we can harness them this is how quick roots which is another microbial product quick roots and mycorrhizal fungi are two completely different organisms there's actually two organisms and quick roots one is a fungus the other is a bacteria they're legitimate useful products but by themselves they have limited effect I mean this it's good that's a very beneficial response but look what happens when you add mycorrhizal fungi the Maiko apply and the quick roots.

15:13 Together having the mycorrhizae fungi in there creates that much more additional habitats surface area for the quicker organisms to colonize, a very synergistic effect with any beneficial root organism when it's applied in combination with mycorrhizal fungus. I think the microbes and fungi is a critical first step in restoring those beneficial marine organisms.

15:43 This is just one case study, this happens to be my farm. Took a picture of my subsoil in November of 2013. The little arrow there indicates the 18 inch root depth, but at the time this was taken I did not have—that was basically the depth to which I had black granular soil. You can see below that it looks like grey, poorly aerated, poorly structured playdough.

16:14 The next spring I inoculated this field with mycorrhizal fungi. You can see six months or so—well, this would be nine months—in March of 2014 I inoculated this with mycorrhizae fungi, and you see not quite a year later, look at the little dark streaks following the root channels. This is from a control area that was not inoculated. Look at how much darker and how much more structure is occurring where those roots are—that's the glomalin that you're seeing.

16:56 A year, a year and a half after that, look at the difference in soil structure, look at the difference in root penetration. We turned grey, massive, structureless playdough into a well-aerated area full of roots, black, crumbly topsoil. This is absolutely amazing.

17:20 Now this was eastern gamagrass, playing with a very good reputation for improving soil, but when you use that perennial plant as a host for the mycorrhizal fungus, it's like gasoline and fire. You really start things going. And then this is a considerable interest now—you get a reduction in the growth of several weed species. Like I said earlier at the beginning of this presentation, there's a lot of weed.

20:14 Five thousand published university research articles on mycorrhizal function. If you want to dial this down, there are approximately four times as many studies with mycorrhizal fungi than there are anhydrous ammonia. Four times the research body on mycorrhizal fungi than there is on anhydrous ammonia. That should tell you something. Nobody questions the effectiveness of anhydrous ammonia boosting formulas, but for some reason there's still questions. There is no question among scientists. Scientists are well aware of it. It's just only recently been commercially available, so we don't have the level of practical experience.

21:05 This is a measure of the yield increase on alfalfa in California. This 21 percent increase by inoculating mycorrhizal fungi. Now you say, well, this stuff is so great. We said wait a minute, this stuff occurs naturally. Don't we already have this stuff? Well, the problem is we do have this in natural ecosystems—forests, prairies, places that have never been plowed and never been fallowed. Because these organisms have to have a living root system in order to survive. In the absence of a living root, they die.

21:50 When we converted perennial ecosystems that have never been tilled, we plow them, let them lay fallow, grow annual plants with long rest periods in between. Basically the stuff dies off. You can see that as this fallow period goes from three to six weeks, we were able to keep some alive. We got 14 to 20 weeks between crops and look at this—very little of that mycorrhizal fungi and effective level of colonization really is about 30%.

22:24 You know, only corn planted immediately—this is a double crop after wheat in case you're wondering. So when you wait three to six weeks to put in corn, it's still effective. None of these other options are. You really need to eliminate.

22:42 Fallow to keep mycorrhizal fungi alive, because we haven't done this really on our cropland for 150 years, might as well consider most of our cropland effectively depleted with mycorrhizae fungi. That explains why I'm an advocate of reinoculating. You can very seldom do we ever find a field when we chant that is absent completely absent of mycorrhizal fungi, but it might take four or five years to build those levels up through cover cropping alone. During that four or five years you're missing out on the benefits. When you inoculate you can get those benefits immediately and then manage to maintain.

23:27 Because this is the condition that so many of our fields have been subjected to for 150 years. This field look alive to you? Obviously, this is a field from the Dust Bowl. But how many of our fields went through intense tillage, intense fallow, dying crops for years and years and years? How can you expect mycorrhizae upon you to survive the absence of any food source here, after year after year after year?

24:09 So when we examined treated samples, when we sent in paired samples between inoculated and inoculated portions of the field—say we, we seldom found zero percent colonization. But when we inoculated, we got that. This is not an effective amount. This is so inoculation definitely improved our loans. We got benefits from it. So what soils only 6% of the untreated areas had adequate colonization. So if it's cropland and all of those were recently cleared for us, if you are dealing with long term cropland, I just assume you don't have it, at least not at levels that are adequate now.

25:04 If it's been long term no-till, cover crop, non-fallow perennial, maybe. But if it's just been regular cropland with long fallow periods, I just assume you don't have it now. What kind of soils do you get the best response on? Basically, the worst soils give me the best response.

25:26 Because they're the ones most likely to need help with water and nutrient uptake. Soils have been fumigated, that's mainly important for vegetable growers, for places where they grow fruit trees, any place that's been treated with phim again probably has zero mycorrhizal fungi. That's going to get a good response to an inoculation. Anything that's been eroded or leveled where the natural mycorrhizae will have been removed.

25:51 Non-host crops, canola. I mean there's a lot of places now in Oklahoma where canola is becoming a big part of the crop rotation. Sugar beet growing areas, sugar beets are non-host. You might as well consider that a year fallow. So the crops following canola, the crops following sugar beets can be very responsive to mycorrhizae.

26:18 Anything that's been fallowed. I know in this part of the world fallow has been a very common crop rotation. As you get into western Kansas and the Brent pan navel of Nebraska, panhandle of Oklahoma, Texas, those areas wheat-fallow wheat was a very common crop rotation. That is just death on mycorrhizae.

26:42 Very high pH soils. Those high pH soils respond very well because the problem with high pH soils, especially high calcium soils, is that they tend to tie up micronutrients. When you inoculate crops on high pH soils with mycorrhizal fungi, the plants all of a sudden are able to access those micronutrients they couldn't before.

27:08 So areas where there's iron deficiency, areas where there's zinc deficiency, copper, manganese, any of the nutrients that are very difficult to come by in a high pH soil, microbes will colonize and plants are able to get better access.

27:27 Salinity, and this is really the best response I've seen with mycorrhizal fungi has been on salty soils. Part of that is because the mycorrhizal fungi are able to access water and get through that salt, but also when the

27:44 Fungi takes salt up they tend to move the salt into a little structure, wall it off and then seal it so it's actually able to take salt out of the soil solution and lock it away for a long period of time, really an amazing little process but very dramatic.

28:08 Of course heavy clays and compacted soils they really benefit from the glomalin and the mycorrhizal fungi. The hyphae are able to exert about 10 times the PSI of a root. Roots are usually unable to exert a pressure high enough to break to push. About 300 PSI is about the upper limit. Roots just stopped growing there but a fungus can penetrate about 1,100. Several times typically it routes about 110 PSI. My garage will fungi hyphae about 1,100 much more pressure.

28:51 So how do we get this stuff on? Well, one thing you can do is you can do it yourself. We have this product Mycoapply Endocrine. This bag here with this bag here covers 80 acres and it's really easy to use. You can put this, it's labeled four core product. We send out four people at our plant in corn. It is actually compatible with starter fertilizer. You can put this right in the fertilizer tank. These spores are very resistant to fertilizer contact and the fungicide that spit on seed does not bother it so you can actually use this even with fungicides, heat treated seed and put it right in the furrow. Long starter for logic 2x2 also works, not quite as effective as in furrow but and you don't have to use fertilizer as a carrier. You can use water, compost extract, compost, eat any of those will work as well. Any liquid that you can put this in that'll get it down in the furrow or work.

30:01 And this is something we can sell you. This package covers 80 acres. Another way, use one of these if you're wanting to have mycorrhizal little funky spores put onto a cover crop. Just call us and we can just blend our own spores. We've got a product called a microgroup that we can blend right into your cover crop mix and you can get this stuff going in a few.