Isra-Mart srl: Gel-suspended mushrooms to tackle peak fertiliser challenge

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Isra-Mart news:

Mushrooms could be the answer to our fertiliser problem, if research presented earlier this week is to be believed.

Swiss researchers believe that fungi living symbiotically with plant roots could help to naturally generate the phosphates that are currently proving so expensive for the agricultural industry.

Research presented at the 111th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans on Monday linked mycorrhizal fungi to the production of phosphate fertilisers.

New techniques enabled researchers at the University of Lausanne to grow these mushrooms in large quantities, and suspend them in a gel solution so that they could be easily transported.

The fungi normally only grows directly among plant roots, drawing phosphates from the soil that are then used to help fertilise the plants, but the new technique could enable their production at a commercial scale.

Prof Ian Sanders explained in his presentation "How Microbes Can Help Feed the World" that his research team was able to produce potato crops with under 50 per cent of the normal phosphate fertilisers, when supplanting them with the gel solution.

Dwindling phosphate supplies are helping to fuel escalating food prices, research suggests. Phosphate rock prices and the food price index tracked each other closely during the food crisis of 2008.

The Soil Association reported in December that supplies of phosphate rock are running out faster than previously anticipated, presenting a major threat to food security.

Its report, A rock and a hard place: Peak phosphorus and the threat to our food security, advised agriculture to become less reliant on phosphate-based fertilisers as a matter of urgency.