Plants trade sugar and fat to fungi for underground nutrients
Mycorrhizal Networks
The soil under your vegetable beds and lawn is threaded with fungal partners that most plants can't survive well without, and knowing that changes how you think about tilling, fertilizing, or dousing everything in fungicide.
Nearly every plant you see, from garden tomatoes to forest trees, has a secret partner living in its roots: a fungus that reaches into the soil to grab phosphorus and other minerals the plant can't easily find on its own. In return, the plant pays the fungus in sugar and fat it makes through photosynthesis, and plants are choosy, sending more food to the fungal partners that work hardest for them. This partnership has been around since plants first grew on land, and the kind of fungal relationship a plant has helps determine how much carbon stays locked in soil versus escaping into the air.
Key Findings
About 70% of vascular plant species today still carry arbuscular mycorrhizal associations that trace back to the earliest land plants in the fossil record
Isotope tracer studies show fungi receive both sugars and fatty acids from host plants, compounds the fungi cannot synthesize themselves, and plants preferentially reward more productive fungal partners
Mycorrhizal type predicts ecosystem-level outcomes including nitrogen cycling rates, soil carbon storage, and plant growth response to rising CO2, with responses to warming, nitrogen deposition, and land conversion differing by type
chevron_right Technical Summary
Most plants don't feed themselves through their roots alone, they team up with underground fungi that hand over phosphorus in exchange for sugar and fat, and the type of partnership a plant has shapes how much carbon soil can store and how ecosystems respond to warming.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Mycorrhizal Symbioses: Mechanisms, Ecological Function and Responses to Global Change
Most land plants acquire mineral nutrients through fungal partners rather than through roots alone. This review examines the cellular basis of that partnership, the differences between the principa...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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