[Terrapreta] Biochar and Fungi

[Michael Bailes]

On 02/11/2007, Rebecca Oglesby <rebecca.oglesby at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi List,
>
> I recently had someone contact me with a concern about biochar. I wanted
> to post it here to get some of your well informed opinions/ideas/knowledge
> on the subject. Here is the letter:
>
>
> <------------While I respect Time Flannery greatly, he is not a fungal
> expert any more than I am.
>

I would tend to agree.
He has only just discoved  Terra preta and pryolisis. With a recent trip to
Adraina at BEST Energies I guess we can be grateful for that


>
> Facts I am well aware of is that there is almost nothing known about
> Australian fungi. New species are being discovered all the time and while
> fungi are not nearly as unique to this continent as is the flora and fauna,
> t
>

Again I would agree.
In Australia we To busy looking for gold, iron uranium, diamonds, copper,
aluminum in the soil to look for the wee beasties that might inhabit
different ecological niches.


> I am not knocking Agrichar. I am just pointing out to you the risk of
> promoting an overseas based solution in the one continent on this planet
> that is very different to all others. Australia has a host of differences
> resulting from effectively missing out on the huge glaciation that other
> continents experienced in the last ice age. The low fertility of our very
> leached soils has resulted in plants and thus also animals very specialized
> to adapt to this rather unique environment. WA is particularly
> cursed/blessed in this regard. A lot of the problems we face today result
> from European settlers treating this land as if it was Europe and I don't
> find our more recent multicultural settlers differ in their approach.
>

Whenever we decide to farm we destroy the mico-ecology of an area's soil.
 Australian soil  is adapted to bsufires ash and some charcoal.
Lately without aboriginal "farming"/stewardship of the land wildfires can
occur leaving mostly ash and dead flora.

I would want to be sure that the Agrichar approach did not encourage or
> introduce 'weed fungi' before I became a fervent advocate. Fair enough to
> suggest it as a possible solution but I would want to see very carefully
> controlled trials before I pushed for widespread use. (If you want to know
> about weed fungi he can probably tell you more than I can or you can have a
> look at the on line fieldbook for identifying the Perth fungi which I seen
> to remember included at least a couple of the weeds.
> < http://www.fungiperth.org.au/ >
>
> Filamentous fungi spread for many kilometres in the soil. Even ground used
> for crops for many years still retain some native fungi as the rather
> infamous story of Sterile Red fungus discovered in WA by an Indian
> Australian establishes. This was the most exciting organism I have ever
> worked with. It protected plants against infection by other fungi, reduced
> their nutrient requirements and increase the growth of every plant we tested
> with it. The University of WA with its great commercial wisdom, sold the
> rights to this fungus to a Japanese company alert to the potential of
> mycorrhizal fungi. Research is now restricted to this company. It protected
> wheat crops from the devastating Take -all disease, which is why and how
> Siva first discovered it.
>

See also the work on glomalin again only recently discovered. (10 years
tops?)

One of our WA members used to quote repeatedly that the worst problems we
> face today are earlier solutions to problems. To this I would add my own
> stricture, as one who taught biotechnology at UWA.
>
> Understand and trust Biology before using Technology.
>
> None of us want to add further solutions that turn into problems and "the
> way to Hell is paved with good intentions."----------->
>


I think if you are aready farming an area than use Tera preta tecniques and
ideas.

Classifying, naming, describing, all soil micro flora/fauna in all climes is
probably beyond anyone's reach. Apart from the difficulty of growing soil
micro flora in lab conditions.
 Their dynamic interactions with each other and plants are only poorly
understood
We would need a NASA type budget even to have a chance of discovering what
life lives under our feet on this planet.
SEE
http://forums.hypography.com/environmental-studies/11569-we-need-trillion-more-indoor-plants-8.html#post194993
for more discussion and posts about this very important aspect of Terra
preta

We still don't know if it is a unique suite of Amazonian micro-organisms
that make TP work as well as it does there.

Please share your thoughts.
>
> ~Rebecca
>
>
>

Warmest wishes.
-- 
Michael the Archangel

"You can fix all the world's problems in a garden. . . .
Most people don't know that"
FROM
http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/permaculture.swf
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