Beneath farmers’ fields, a hidden network of fungi connects plant roots to one another and to the soil around them, and this project will map those networks to see how they help crops survive drought. Most crops form symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi, which trade nutrients for sugars. But scientists know surprisingly little about how these fungal networks behave under real farming conditions—especially how ploughing, fertiliser use, or crop rotation affect them. This project fills that gap by measuring three distinct parts of the network: the thread-like filaments spreading through soil, the direct fungal links between plants, and the broader web of interactions among multiple plant and fungal species. If successful, the research could give farmers a practical tool for building drought resilience without relying solely on irrigation or new crop varieties. Understanding how management practices shape fungal networks might also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from soil. The work is fundamentally about ecosystem function—it will not deliver a product or a prescription, but it could change how land managers think about the living infrastructure beneath their feet.
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The overall goal of SOIL-HEAL is to realise the potential of symbiotic soil fungi for sustainable agriculture, thereby addressing a key aim of the EJP Soil call to foster holistic and sustainable agricultural soil management practices. Most plants have coevolved with soil fungi to form root-fungal ("mycorrhizal") symbioses that are critical for regulating numerous ecosystem functions and services in natural and agricultural settings. An important feature of mycorrhizal fungi is their ability to form 'networks', which (in the broad sense) comprise three distinct elements: extra-radical mycelium, common mycorrhizal networks (CMNs), where a fungus links two or more plants, and community-level 'interaction networks' between and among mycorrhizal plant and fungal species. Despite the potential huge importance of mycorrhizal symbioses in agriculture, our understanding of the ubiquity and function of mycorrhizal fungal networks and their contribution to resilience of agri-ecosystems is remarkably poor. This is especially true under 'real-world' field conditions and in response to common management interventions used by farmers and land managers. To realise the potential of AM fungi for sustainable agriculture, SOIL-HEAL seeks to advance our mechanistic understanding of all three elements of fungal networks by determining: i) the properties of interaction networks of plants and fungi; ii) the production and turnover of extra-radical mycelium; iii) the relationships between fungal networks and key ecosystem functions, such as greenhouse gas production; iv) how management interventions influence the extent and function of fungal networks; v) whether fungal networks enhance the resilience of agri-ecosystems to climate extremes, especially drought, which is expected to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change.
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