Mycoremediation Consulting

While bioremediation may sound like a high tech concept only accessible to academic researchers and large companies, it is actually available for anyone to use once we understand the basics. This is because the plants, fungi, bacteria and other organisms that research has demonstrated are capable of cleaning up many types of pollution can be found living in our back yards! Performing bioremediation is really a matter of growing out beneficial organisms and putting them where they need to go.

Our methods focus on fungi as the central organisms for land enhancement because of their vigorous growth, diverse decompositional abilities, soil structure benefits and ecosystem connectivity. While the fungi do the heavy lifting we utilize other soil microorganisms for nutrient cycling and plants to stabilize and grow upward.

Applicable Problems

• Contaminated Soil (Heavy Metals or Organic Pollutants)
• Compacted Soil
• Erosion
• Barren Soil
• Contaminated Water Runoff
• Eutrophication
• Plant Disease
• Pest Damage

Techniques We Use

Mycofiltration

• Filtering run off water from farms, commercial or residential properties using myceliated materials
• How it works:
  • The surface fungal mycelium, the root like vegetative structure of the fungus, is a dense complex web of threads that can both physically trap runoff material and bind chemicals out of water onto the charged sites of its surface
  • Show diagram/picture here of functional groups on mycelium surface

Improving Soil Fertility or Structure

• Adding mycelium spawn and organic matter will improve the aeration, water retention and carbon sequestration or your soil
• As the fungal mycelium grows from its inoculum to nearby organic matter in order to decay and eat it, it’s threads create a connective network of living tissue that brings more structure to soil, increase the development of humus and large soil aggregates, as well as creating habitat for other soil microbes. Additionally many types of fungi will help plant roots by keeping their predators away and increasing their access to nutrients and water
• These techniques are applicable to any type of soil, from sand to clay, as long as you have fungi and organic matter to add
• Compost tea and other diverse microorganism inocula can be used in conjunction with our general fungal inoculation procedures to ramp up the biodiversity and functionality of your soil
• The fungi and organic matter can be applied on top of existing soil to minimize disturbance and preserve existing microbial communities, or can be tilled into the soil to inoculate and aerate is deeper down, allowing a deeper depth of soil to be colonized. Top dressing is recommended for soils that are already relatively healthy, while tilling is recommended for highly degraded soils with little structure or microbial activity

Decontaminating Soil

• Similar to 2 except we choose specific strains of fungi that are known to be potent degraders of chemical pollutants and more tolerant of potential toxicity