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Environment

Millions of trees could grow faster with a boost from wild fungi

The largest tree nursery in North America is helping scale up efforts to inoculate seedlings with native fungi and other soil microbes, a treatment that helps trees grow faster and capture more carbon

By James Dinneen

26 July 2024

A start-up is inoculating tree seedlings with wild fungi

Funga

A million trees and counting have been inoculated with native fungi by a US start-up aiming to make the trees grow faster and store more carbon. Outside researchers say this could be effective, but they have concerns about disturbing microbial diversity in soil.

“On the scale they’re talking about, that’s a crapload of soil,” says Miranda Hart at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

The forestry industry has long experimented with ways to improve growth…

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