Episode 4. A fun guy, a great judge of character and a very interesting three years drawing moss.

Do you like your agricultural scientific research sumarised in easily digestible form or described at length in mind numbing detail? Oh, OK, nevermind; how about this then? Have you ever asked yourself what happens to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal mediated phosphate supply when stressed plants stop supplying sugar-like carbon molecules to the fungi? No? Seriously? Nevertheless, buckle up and welcome to the School of Biology at Leeds University, West Yorkshire. Eee by gum, ey up, etc.

Michael makes a couragous attempt at humour, based on the marvelous premise that AMF (the phosphate supplying fungi) sounds a bit like EMF (the 90s band), but Paul doesn't understand what's happening and it falls a bit flat. We alienate another potential sponsor and the cats continue to carry the show.

Links

The main paper; Charters, M.D., Sait, S.M. and Field, K.J., 2020. Aphid herbivory drives asymmetry in carbon for nutrient exchange between plants and an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus. Current Biology, 30(10), pp.1801-1808. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30294-3

Great judge of character, Professor Katie Field on The Infinite Monkey Cage, with Professor Brian Cox and popular fungus botherer Dr Merlin Sheldrake (not kidding). https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fwww6q

EMF doing their thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfCLt0kTd5E&list=RDsfCLt0kTd5E&start_radio=1

The Swiss work on how AMF protects maize against pathogenic fungi. Lutz, S., Bodenhausen, N., Hess, J., Valzano-Held, A., Waelchli, J., Deslandes-Hérold, G., Schlaeppi, K. and van der Heijden, M.G., 2023. Soil microbiome indicators can predict crop growth response to large-scale inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Nature Microbiology, 8(12), pp.2277-2289. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01520-w

The British Society of Soil Science webinar with Dr Anne Bhogal and Professor Richard Bardgett; see proper scientists putting themselves out there and talking to normal people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RggdJPe6nio Don't tell Professor Bardgett (eminent respected academic, titan in his field, behemoth, etc), but Paul thinks that the evidence that biodiversity (species richness) causes agroecosystem productivity is weak, because he's been thinking about it for almost a year now.

The paper about soil and bacteria and fungi and that sort of thing. Howe, J.A., McDonald, M.D., Burke, J., Robertson, I., Coker, H., Gentry, T.J. and Lewis, K.L., 2024. Influence of fertilizer and manure inputs on soil health: A review. Soil Security, 16, p.100155. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667006224000297

The it's-a-network paper that shows unstressed plants transfering extra Carbon to AMF, which makes up for neighbouring stressed plants being a bit crap. Durant, E., Hoysted, G.A., Howard, N., Sait, S.M., Childs, D.Z., Johnson, D. and Field, K.J., 2023. Herbivore-driven disruption of arbuscular mycorrhizal carbon-for-nutrient exchange is ameliorated by neighboring plants. Current Biology, 33(12), pp.2566-2573. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30294-3