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  KaiserPro
  I know its not that sexy, but soil is a hugely diverse ecosystem that is barely understood. There is lots of science to be done trying to classify and work out the mechanics of how nutrient is filters transmuted and transportedIt we want to feed the world, when that world is throwing more extreme weather at us, we need to work out how to do companion planting at scale. (think how east coast indians did farming) IF we can make practical farm robots, we can not only remove the need for herbiscides (direct manual intervention, ie physically weeding buy pulling out the seedlings) but also keep ground cover even after cropping, meaning much less water loss.Soil degradation is a real threat. the way we farm now means we have massive monocultures, large tracks of land that are bare for weeks on end. All of this requires lots of inputs to be productive. The promise of non-pesticide farming is that you get much richer soil, because you're not killing off the stuff that lives there.But we need to understand what makes a soil productive, however that changes based on location and crops.
• _ache_
  Note: coauthor Toby Kiers received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement of 2026. She also created SPUN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_the_Protection_of_...
• PeterHolzwarth
  Article is a bit short. Here's a few more to flesh out the topic and the plant, tho honestly only by a smidge (none of these links require javascript enabled)https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/botany/news/plant-pre...https://www.earth.com/news/native-fungi-native-trees-plants-...https://matjournals.net/pharmacy/index.php/IJPPR/article/vie...https://ijpsr.com/?action=download_pdf&postid=97498
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  tastyfreeze
  Maybe it is best to think of many plants as photochemical food factory extensions for mycorrhizal fungi. Some plants can do without but many will suffer without a specific mycorrhizae.
• dmos62
  Hope all this work won't be under water in 50 years.
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  spiderfarmer
  It’s always a bit cringe, as an IT guy, overhearing non-technical people debate tech. I know the answers to most of their “why don’t they just” questions, or at least know they’re asking the wrong ones. Jumping in is an uphill battle, so I usually don’t bother.But I’m more of a farmer at heart. For my newsletter/platform I follow agricultural research from the Netherlands on a daily basis. That country is arguably the best center for agricultural R&D anywhere. This particular study is evidence of that.That makes HN threads on farming equally painful to read. The “why don’t they just,” “we should do more about,” and “we need to innovate/research” takes are almost always mis- or superficially informed.The term “mycorrhiza” for example was coined by Albert Bernhard Frank in 1885. So we’ve been doing research on this topic for at least 14 decades already.
• contingencies
  Nice looking fern at left of the scientist in the image appears to be Microsorum pustulatum, aka "Kangaroo fern", a climber/spreading rhizome.
• picsao
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• aaron695
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