How fungi is being used to grow superplants in bid to restore damaged grasslands

Adriana Morrell thinks fungi have a lot of secret abilities, and in her lab at Lethbridge Polytechnic, she's busy trying to find out what they are.

"It's all about starting to think about this completely hidden world and flipping those little lids and finding who's in there and what they do for us," she said.

"It's just that they need the attention."

As some of the oldest organisms on earth, fungi are ubiquitous in ecosystems across the planet, but Morrell says there is still a lot we don't know about them.

That's why one of the lids she's been flipping over recently is that of something called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). It's a microscopic organism she thinks could play a crucial role in helping plants thrive in places where soil has been disturbed, and where ecosystems have been altered by agricultural or industrial processes.

By injecting native grasses with AMF and other beneficial bacteria, Morrell hopes that grasslands degraded by activity near the Leitch Collieries — an active coal mine in the Crowsnest Pass from 1907 to 1915 — can be restored to their former glory by creating, in effect, "superplants" charged with the beneficial fungi and bacteria.

"These fungi … they live in the soil and they associate with the plants, providing nutrients and water for the plants that these plants can't reach on their own. And then the plants in return provide carbohydrates for the fungi to thrive," she said.

"So it's a very good friendship and partnership between these fungi and the plant, and it occurs naturally in the ecosystem."

The four-year project, which began this summer and will continue into 2028, is driven by the Mycology Research Lab at Lethbridge Polytechnic and funded by Alberta Innovates. It will take place on two 100-square-metre sites on property owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC), one of the country's largest land conservation organizations.

The sites are some of the most challenging across the NCC's property around the historic Leitch Collieries, meaning they haven't been successfully restored using traditional methods, said Morrell.

"The sites have [experienced] several disturbances that are associated with coal mining, like grading, levelling to build structures, gravel extraction, and there was cattle in the area as well.… Some areas have been left to recover naturally and some areas are struggling to thrive, so we're trying to focus on those areas."

Morrell's work, which will be undertaken with her co-principal investigator, Srijak Bhatnagar of Athabasca University, is part of a growing trend in the world of mycology (the study of mushrooms and fungi) that looks at using the wide cast of characters in the fungal kingdom to restore places that have experienced environmental damage, or even mitigate environmental risks.

In Colorado, mushrooms have been used to fight wildfires, and in the Skeena watershed in northwestern British Columbia, a team of researchers is using fungi to break down old creosote-contaminated railway ties, and reclaim slash piles left behind by logging operations.

"Basically, we are just using what's already in nature to see if [it] can help us establish and improve these very important ecosystems," said Morrell.

If it works, she thinks there's a chance the research could be applied to other degraded grassland sites.

"If this approach works at a smaller site that is highly disturbed, it is more likely to be practical for other areas that have similar characteristics."

A new kind of conservation

Morrell's project was first spurred into action at a Grassland Restoration Forum meeting in the fall of 2022. It was there that she presented her research on how AMF could help plants grow in depleted soils, particularly in grassland ecosystems.

Alia Snively, the ecological restoration manager with NCC, wasn't at that convention but she heard about it later from her colleagues.

"[Adriana's] presentation really sparked a lot of interest in the restoration community," said Snively.

Part of the reason for that, Snively said, is because conservation is often thought of as what's happening above the ground, like replanting trees, for example.

"You know, you're measuring plant height and seeing if there's survival, but not necessarily understanding what goes on under the ground that influences that," said Snively.

But as NCC has undertaken more conservation projects across the country, Snively said interest has grown in understanding the interactions between native plants and the soil they're in.

Typically, restoration activities can include letting areas naturally revegetate, reseeding, or by transplanting native species to a site. But there's a variety of reasons why these methods don't always work, says Morrell.

Drought can affect replanting efforts, and once the natural "seed bank" present in soil has been removed, it can be hard to re-establish native plant networks because invasive species often spread faster. If the soil has been extensively disturbed, it may contain toxins or lack the proper nutrients to support plants.

Morrell said her team isn't yet sure if the soil near the Leitch Collieries contains toxins, or if it's deficient in certain nutrients. Testing different samples is currently in progress.

The testing could also reveal if there are any fungi or bacteria that are beneficial to native plants left in the area, said Morrell. This would allow the team to learn from and utilize what's already present in the soil.

"This is what we call soil probiotics. So the same way that we have gut bacteria with all these unique probiotics as animals or humans, that [also] happens in the soil, there are native [microbial] communities that are very specific to that area that could actually be beneficial for those plants."

If the soil is deficient in some way, Morrell says AMF will help transport nutrients that are relatively immobile in the soil, like phosphorus or zinc, directly to the plants her team will attempt to establish there. In times of drought, the fungi can also channel water to the grasses in the deficient area, helping make the transplants more resilient.

More efficient, less costly possibilities

While it will still be some time before the results of Morrell's study are in, Snively is looking forward to the potential of their broader application.

NCC is working toward restoring many grassland sites in the province, particularly in southern Alberta, she said.

Each site that NCC manages has its own unique characteristics, said Snively. But she thinks that, generally speaking, Morrell's work will help advance their understanding of plant interactions with soil, and how different native species respond to AMF.

"I think restoration is usually quite kind of time-intensive," said Snively.

"It requires a lot of adaptive management and things like that. [So] anything that can kind of help with plant establishment is really exciting to me as a restoration manager … learning more about how we can do things better, how we can increase [restoration] success rates."

Leila Darwish, a bioremediation specialist with the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition (the team using fungi to break down contaminated railway ties), said any research project that manages to break out of the lab and get into the field is beneficial for the whole industry.

She said that, broadly speaking, Canada lags behind the United States in its use of mycology for environmental restoration and mitigation projects.

"There is a lot of literature and studies that have happened in labs in universities where they're like, this fungi, this mushroom breaks this down.

"That's very different [compared to] what happens when you take that outside. I think we need more people doing the work in the field so that we can develop protocols and best practices and, you know, learn from it and do the work."