Fungi could be crucial in storing emissions and fighting climate change, study finds

A new study has found that fungi plays a bigger role in fighting climate change than previously known.

Research conducted by an international team of scientists discovered that an estimated 13.12 gigatons of CO2 is transferred from plants to fungal networks annually. This equates to about 36 per cent of yearly global fossil fuel emissions – more than China emits each year.

Fungi is a major carbon trap that researchers say have remained overlooked.

Professor Katie Field, professor of plant-soil processes at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the study, believes mucorrhizal fungi represents a blind spot in carbon modelling, conservation and restoration.

“The numbers we’ve uncovered are jaw-dropping, and when we’re thinking about solutions for climate [change] we should also be thinking about what we can harness that exists already,” Field said in the press release.

 “Soil ecosystems are being destroyed at an alarming rate through agriculture, development and other industry, but the wider impacts of disruption of soil communities are poorly understood. When we disrupt the ancient life support systems in the soil, we sabotage our efforts to limit global heating and undermine the ecosystems on which we depend.”

Heidi Hawkins, lead author of the study from University of Cape Town, said carbon storage in fungal networks – known as mycelium – could play a role in allowing countries to reach net zero emissions.

“We always suspected that we may have been overlooking a major carbon pool,” Hawkins said in the release. “Understandably, much focus has been placed on protecting and restoring forests as a natural way to mitigate climate change, but little attention has been paid to the fate of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide that are moved from the atmosphere during photosynthesis by those plants and sent belowground to mycorrhizal fungi.”

Hawkins explained that there remains a major gap in understanding the permanence of carbon storage within those mycorrhizal networks.

“We do know that it is a flux, with some being retained in mycorrhizal structures while the fungus lives, and even after it dies,” Hawkins said. “Some will be decomposed into small carbon molecules and from there either bind to particles in the soil, or even be reused by plants. And certainly, some carbon will be lost as carbon dioxide gas during respiration by other microbes or the fungus itself.”

The findings, published in Current Biologyin June 2023, are prompting researchers to assess conservation and biodiversity policies, which can utilize the benefits of carbon storage in soil.

Professor Toby Kiers, senior author from Vrije University Amsterdam and co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, explained that this research is part of a global push to understand what’s happening beneath the ground.

“We know that mycorrhizal fungi are vitally important ecosystem engineers, but they are invisible to most people,” he said.

“Mycorrhizal fungi lie at the base of the food webs that support much of life on Earth, but we are just starting to understand how they actually work. There’s still so much to learn.”