The Ledger
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Hawkins: Mycorrhizal fungi cannot be engineered to draw down additional carbon dioxide
“It's not like we can somehow use mycorrhizae
To additionally now draw down more CO two than they are already.”
Hawkins: Climate efforts should preserve fungal habitats rather than engineer fungi
“I don't think it's so much about it being some kind of carbon reduction system that we can manipulate so much as it's about our behavior change so that we provide conditions that encourage the growth of these mycorrhizal fungi so they can continue to draw down…”
Hawkins: Plant-fungal symbiosis acts as an economic market with resource cheaters
“So describing it as this reciprocal exchange where, like in our own economy, you can get cheetahs you can get fungi that give more than they take or take more than they give. And, you know, like with everything it seems to depend. It depends on the partners in…”
Hawkins: The 13-gigaton fungal carbon pool is just 0.1% of soil carbon
“So I think if you take, you know, all the carbon that is in the soil I did a little calculation a little bit earlier, and we come up with a massive amount, if we express it in CO₂ equivalents, it's nearly
9000.
And our mycorrhizal pool is about 13 gigatons o…”
Hawkins: Nearly every plant root on Earth relies on fungal symbiosis
“Hardly a root on the planet is actually just a root. It's very often this association.”
Hawkins: Fungal networks boost host plant photosynthetic rates by up to 20%
“You can have a boost of five to 20% of the plant's photosynthetic rate, so amount of CO₂ per meter squared per second.”
Hawkins: Mapping fungal diversity provides a crucial tool for carbon offsets
“I think there's a lot of exciting potential there because on the cards are various sorts of maps that we can use in conservation planning. So, you know, when you're planning a conservation area, you will usually look at where you've got high biodiversity. You …”
Hawkins: Mycorrhizal fungi were colonizing land plants 450 million years ago
“We know from the fossil record that by the time plants moved out of an aquatic environment, so the sea, onto land, we know that this partnership already existed. So the fungi are really, really old. How old exactly? We don't know. But we know by about four hun…”