How Do Fungal Systems Influence Plant Health? | A Molecular Ecologist Explains

Finding Genius Podcast

Richard Jacobs

Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we connect with Martin Bidartondo, a Professor of Molecular Ecology who works in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London. Martin is immensely interested in fungi and plant interactions, which has led to his innovative research on the "evolutionary ecology of the diverse plants that cheat mycorrhizal mutualisms".

As someone that has always had a fascination with interactions between different species, Martin began investigating the symbioses between lineages of plants and fungi more than two decades ago. How are the changes that human life is imposing on the environment interacting with plant and fungal systems? Martin is on a mission to find out…

Join the conversation now to uncover:

How forest ecosystems impact carbon levels and biodiversity.
The integral role that fungi play in the nutritional status of trees.
How industrialism is creating unwanted consequences by increasing carbon output into the environment.
How plants and fungi created soil millions of years ago.

To find out more about Marin and his work, click here now!

Episode also available on Apple Podcast: http://apple.co/30PvU9C

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We had quite a lot of interest in forests, quite a few years now,
0:04.7	forests are something that we are all sort of banking on, right?
0:08.0	We are expecting forests to capture all that excess carbon for us
0:12.9	and to hold on to the carbon that they already have,
0:15.6	forests, trees and their soils.
0:18.3	In most countries, there is a lot of focus on trying to keep forests
0:22.9	or increase the forest area for carbon capture purposes
0:26.9	and also for biodiversity.
0:29.4	And fungi are very much involved in all of that.
0:32.3	They don't get a lot of attention, a lot of discussion,
0:35.2	but they are an integral part.
0:36.6	And so that's sort of what we've been focusing on.
0:39.6	So there are some really big changes that we've been imposing on these fungal systems.
0:46.1	Forget frequently asked questions.
0:47.9	Common sense, common knowledge or Google.
0:50.4	How about advice from a real genius?
0:52.6	95% of people in any profession are good enough to be qualified in license.
0:57.0	5% go above and beyond.
0:58.8	They become very good at what they do,
1:00.5	but only 0.1% are real geniuses.
1:03.8	Richard Jacobs has made his life's mission to find them for you.
1:07.9	He hunts down and interviews geniuses in every field.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Richard Jacobs, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Richard Jacobs and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.