What if you could add something to a food crop that made it live a longer, healthier,
heartier life?
What if that thing… is a fungus?
Howdy partners, Trace here for DNews.
Microbiome seems to be the word of the year, doesn't it?
If you haven't heard it, a microbiome is the flora of bacteria that live, in, on and around
each of us -- and every one is different.
The tiny microbes in our microbiome don't hurt us, but live alongside and with us our
whole lives!
Your dog has one, you have one, and the plants in your backyard each have one.
If the last one comes as a surprise, you're not alone.
Microbiomes of certain people can help keep us healthy, and the same goes with plants!
As a plant grows, nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil help plants stay healthy.
Rather than genetically engineering the crops, or adding chemicals, scientists can tweak
the microbiome of a whole field and help the plants live longer!
Or so the study says published in the journal Cell and written up on Nature.
Rater than using pesticides to kill the things on our crops and fertilizers to replace lost
nutrients, scientists now believe they can alter these microbiomes to encourage plant
growth and keep them healthy…
A company called Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies is doing just that with crops that they say
will help plants grow better in the droughts of the west.
It's called BioEnsure!
It's a type of microbiotic fungi called an endophyte.
The discovery of the endophyte is nothing new, they've known about them since the latter
half of the last century.
They discovered that the endophytes could change farming as we know it.
When visiting Yellowstone National Park, they found plants with this symbiotic fungi living
in terribly hostile conditions; the fungi was keeping these plants alive!
BioEnsure is AST's adaptation of that symbiotic fungi so it can work with more crops!
When it's put onto the seeds before they're planted, these endophytes protect the root
systems, let the plant germinate and even keep it healthy when there's a dought!
It's a pretty incredible claim.
WIRED magazine reported "BioEnsure-treated crops generated 85 percent more yield" during
the 2012 midwest drought.
That's ridiculous.
It even helped corn, a notoriously difficult plant because of the way it depletes the soil,
use one third less water.
Americans are wary about genetically modified crops, pesticides, irradiated fruits and vegetables,
but it might be that tweaking the biome or microscopic neighbors of these plants could
be the simple solution scientists have been hoping for.
The liquid product will be available this fall, and has been approved by the FDA.
The studies show it's non-toxic, doesn't affect the fruit, or get into the plant at all; just
like with you and MC Shaggyback the microbiome lives alongside and in congress with the plant.
It's not magic, it's science.
And we wanna thank Subaru for making it possible for us to report cool scientific innovations
like this.
Special shout-out to the all-new 2015 Subaru Legacy.
Every sedan has its benefits, but only one combines them all.
It’s not just a sedan.
It’s a Subaru.
Back to the fungus - Would you trust it?
Would you put it on your plants?
Or eat plants you knew it was on?
Germinate the comments -- yes that was a bad pun -- aaaaand thanks for watching DNews!
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