Re: [compost_tea] Mycorrhizae

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 18:26:36 EDT

Russ -

Have you looked at Harley and Harley's book (hum, maybe Harley and Waid,
don't remember) where they did a world-wide assessment of mycorrhizal status of
plants? It is quite old, but probably the only text looking at non-commercial,
non-crop plants.

When we started looking at Kincaid's Lupine, we didn't know if it was
mycorrhizal or not, for example. So, we had to collect roots and assess whether they
were first of all capable of being mycorrhizal. Then we had to find spores
in the field (at the surface of the soil of plant with colonized roots), and
add those spores to potting soil and plant the seeds. Then once grown, we had
to assess whether the roots had become mycorrhizal. They had. The seeds
planted without the mycorrhizal spores germinated, but then died within three
months, while the mycorrhizal lupine survived just fine, as I recall. Dr. Mark
Wilson was involved in this study, and he's still at Oregon State University, so
you could ask him about it.

What annoys me about your e-mail is the fact that you seem to feel that
someone else is to blame when you can't get the knowledge that you want, right when
you want it.

Maybe mycorrhizal people should be resentful of the fact that you expect them
to hand you everything you want to know, without paying for or supporting the
work that has been done. It has not been an easy battle to get people to
accept that mycorrhizal fungi are important. We are lucky to know about
mycorrhizal fungi for commercial plant species.

If mycorrhizal researchers had been paid to do the work of assessing whether
the plants you want to know about were mycorrhizal, they would have done the
work. So, you expect scientists to work for free? Can we expect you to work
for free?

You are being given the best information possible, given our current state of
knowledge. People don't know everything yet. Pay someone to find out what
you want to know instead of being resentful and frustrated.

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.




Received on Thu Oct 09 2003 - 21:34:48 EDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Tue Feb 07 2012 - 14:14:49 EST