Royal Botanic Garden seeks respect for world’s fungus
LONDON — The scientists at the renowned Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are trying to correct an injustice: They don’t believe fungus gets the respect it deserves.
That’s one reason behind the release Wednesday of their “State of the World’s Fungi ” report, touted as the first ever global look at the way fungi help provide food, medicine, plant nutrition, lifesaving drugs — and can also spread death and destruction at an alarming pace.
The focus on fungi is designed to call attention to potentially vital new uses now being studied — including possible deployment of a fungus that “eats” plastic and degrades it quickly, and one that may clean up radioactive waste — and to warn that climate change is threatening fungi habitat in various parts of the Earth.
Director of Science Katherine Willis says researchers know relatively little about fungi — many of them hidden beneath the ground, or invisible to the naked eye, or living in a plant’s cells — even though fungus has been used to ferment food and drink for more than 9,000 years.