Problems in food production will perhaps become the most critical one. Within the next 50-100 years, global high quality rock phosphate reserves will deplete. The global peak P (the point of time when production starts to decrease due to resource depletion) is forecasted for 2040-2050 and reserves of one of the biggest producers, the U.S.A., are calculated to be already depleted in 2040. Rock phosphate is the primary, but non-renewable source for large scale P-fertilization in agriculture, and currently there is no practical or theoretical alternative. Despite this, as applied in high input agricultural systems, e.g. in the U.S.A. and Europe, more than 60% of the P are being wasted. The general situation for food production is even worse, because fertile soil resources will start declining very soon - which implies that 'peak soil' and 'peak phosphorous' will most likely occur even earlier than 'peak oil'. Each of these three 'peaks' in production or availability alone might already be disastrous for our food-safety.
This web site contains commercial pages offering research-grade AM fungal inoculum and research-services, along with pages for some scientific background information. We offer in vitro produced quality of AM fungal inoculum, which allows easy setup and interpretation of experiments - and saves your time and money.
Plant
sciences are intrinsically linked to AM: land plants co-evolved with AM fungi - since their origin, even before
plants had
evolved roots. This is, e.g., reflected by the strong dependency of many plants on AM fungi (such
as the tropical tree on the photograph,
left
with and
right without
inoculation with
AM fungi,
after 6 months).
By using
AM fungi, many research experiments
become more meaningful.
For research we offer in vitro produced AM fungi to ensure flexible setup and development of your experiments and applications. These fungi have already been successfully tested in research projects and/or applied in field experiments.
In vitro ROC (root organ culture) produced AM fungi can be applied in a very controlled manner.
We were and are involved in a range of basic and also applied research projects. For references, check our up-to-date publication list.
We are specialized in AM fungi characterization and quality control, including molecular biological methods, with the demands of our customers in mind. Our products are pre-designed for easy application. Futhermore we offer state of the art AM fungi DNA-based monitoring systems.
View our Getting Started page. Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss your needs.
To provide biological material for research, fungal cultures are in vitro (in stzerile systems) produced.
Regarding quality control (of fungal cultures, or directly from products), we provide services for producers and customers. We offer DNA-based monitorings and
phylogenetic analyses for producers, customers and researchers (inquire for more information). Based on NGS phylotaxonomic methods field inventories of AM fungi (from soil or roots) are offered, based on high throughput MiSeq (450 bp) amplicon-sequencing, a continuously updated reference database, and bioinformatic allowing species-level resolution.