My
former supervisor is a good-natured person and an owner of a charming
smile. Everyone, who knows him, would agree on this, even I still
think so. At the beginning, I thought that my supervisor has a clear
vision of our goals and a firm plan of action. The instructions that
I got, however, sounded like these: “You know, I am interested in arbuscular mycorrhyzal fungi*... Please, investigate something
interesting about them.” Up to that point of my life, I have never
seen miracle arbuscular mycorrhyzal fungi before and trusted
supervisor that AMF are the last hope for sustainable
agriculture. Probably, I was not agitated enough to propose something
truly grandiose, so after a while, my supervisor provided me with an
article of another respectful expert in AMF, and a heap of PVC
pipes, and asked me:
a.
to construct traps for AMF from the PVC pipes and pieces of mesh;
b.
to catch and tame wild AMF from Uppsala region
I
must admit, I am a very bad plumber – traps, constructed by me from
the PVC pipes looked awful. Nevertheless, eager to perform the task,
I made my own, more feminine traps. They seemed to work and after a
few months I caught my first sample of the arbuscular mycorrhyzal
fungi! But after I saw them under a microscope a heavy doubt started
teasing me: AMF caught by me must have been in a last stage of
dystrophy, or otherwise they cannot be a hope for agriculture. For
more than a year I nursed my AMF flock. I watered and fed them and
provided with different host plants to live on, but nothing helped –
my AMF did not want to grow the way that was prescribed by the
classic articles, plus other fungi overgrew them rapidly.
I
tormented my supervisor with questions on how to improve AMF
cultures. He was always an inexhaustible source of stories about
ancient techniques of taming AMF. Unfortunately, he found it
difficult to show how it was done in practice.
After
more than a year struggle, I decided prepare carefully my
supervisor's mind to the idea that nothing useful can be done about AMF without tampering the results and that I do not possess the
necessary result tampering talent. Probably he still thinks that I
failed with the implementation of his grandiose plan because I am a
squib. When it became clear, that all attempts to “investigate
something interesting about AMF” came to a dead end, I proposed him
my own project and finally got his blessings to start with it.
__________________________________________________________________
*
arbuscular mycorrhyzal fungi (AMF) – mysterious microorganisms. A
little thicker than a human hair; 1-5 cm long. Found on plant roots.
“Scientists” believe that AMF defend plants from biotic and
abiotic stresses; supply them with water; persistently feed plants
with phosphorus, nitrogen, magnesium, iron, potassium, calcium,
magnum, copper, cadmium, selenium, and, possible, iodine. AMF also
were proved to purify plant's karma.
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