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Practices

Starting in the Soil – How Mycorrhizae Below Helps the Crops Above


Mycorrhizal fungi can provide both short- and long-term value to growers by building stronger, better plants from the soil up.

Healthy crops above the surface begin with a healthy soil and root zone below the surface. In order to sustain a healthy operation over time and maximize profitability, it’s essential for growers to maximize their soil health. With this in mind, accessing water and nutrients below the surface is challenging if ground resources are depleted or if the natural rhizosphere is compromised.
 
Common practices such as tillage, compaction, eroded topsoil, fumigation and crop rotation can affect long-term soil health. Over time, these practices can degrade large populations of beneficial organisms in the soil, hence the need to reestablish these populations for many crops, including trees and vines, fruiting vegetables, cucurbits, strawberries and more.
 
What’s Below the Surface?
One of the beneficial organisms that is found beneath the surface is mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhiza is a fungus that forms a mutually beneficial relationship with the host plant via hyphae generated by the mycorrhizae.
 
Hyphae are microscopic structures that grow throughout the rhizosphere and out of the colonized plant roots, going where roots can’t to help access nutrients in the soil. These essential nutrients such as phosphorous, zinc and other micronutrients are often located in tiny spaces in the soil otherwise unreachable even by fine root hairs.
 
Once the hyphae reach those nutrients and water, they transport them back to the plant to utilize for its growth. When crops obtain the nutrients they need below the surface, overall plant growth above the surface is improved.
 
In addition to hyphae, mycorrhizae are also composed of the spores, vesicles and arbuscules. The propagule spore is dormant in the soil, producing the hyphae when roots begin to grow. The vesicles are used as storage structures, providing resources as needed by the plant, while the arbuscule transfers resources gathered by hyphae to the plant.
 
Benefits of Mycorrhizae
Along with increased nutrient uptake, growers that incorporate mycorrhizae will see additional benefits for their crop’s performance – including root mass expansion, drought resistance, and improved transplant vigor and survivability.
 
Mycorrhizae also offer long-term benefits that can improve a grower’s sustainability efforts. Damaged soils can often be made productive with the introduction of mycorrhizae. By producing glomalin and increasing carbon content, mycorrhizae are able to improve the soil structure over time.
 
Inoculate and Incorporate
To enhance your grower’s operation with mycorrhizae and improve overall productivity, it’s important to inoculate early in the crop cycle with the right concentration.
 
There are a handful of crops (brassica, for example) that are non-mycorrhizal. In situations where those crops are in rotation, they can reduce the amount of mycorrhizae in the soil. Therefore, it is recommended to re-inoculate following a rotation with a non-mycorrhizal crop.
 
Mycorrhizae may seem like a foreign concept to growers, but once established, this biological component of healthy soil will provide powerful, sustainable growth in crops – starting in the soil.

* First published by CAPCA Applicator Alerts. Republished on the permission of CAPCA.

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