Li Ka-shing, Atlassian Founder Mike Cannon-Brooke Invest In Tiny Fungi To Store Carbon In Soil

Is there anything the fungus among us can't do?
From AgFunder, June 24:

Using microfungi and melanin, this soil carbon startup just raised $6.9m in a round led by Li Ka-shing’s VC

Australian startup Soil Carbon Co has raised A$10 million ($6.94 million) in seed funding in a round led by Horizons Ventures, the VC firm set up by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing.

Horizons was joined by Grok Ventures, a VC firm launched by Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes and his wife Annie Todd. Lowercarbon Capital – a climate-focused fund established by early Uber and Twitter backer Chris Sacca – also participated, as did the Australian government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Based in Orange, New South Wales, Soil Carbon Co is seeking to solve two, related problems: too much carbon dioxide in the air, and too little carbon in the ground.

The startup is developing tech that allows for crops to be inoculated with symbiotic micro-organisms. Not only do these microbes improve the host plant’s fertility and protection against disease, but they also help the soil around the plant’s roots to store carbon more effectively, leading to better quality soil for future planting.

When a crop absorbs carbon dioxide via photosynthesis, around 30% of it is transformed into carbon-containing sugars that are exuded through the plant’s roots and into the soil, explains agronomist Guy Webb, managing director of Soil Carbon Co’s nonprofit affiliate SoilCQuest.

“That carbon flow is very significant, but turns back into CO2 at a fairly rapid rate through reaction with oxygen and diffuses back into what we think of as the carbon cycle,” he tells AFN.

“We’re putting an intermediary between the soil and the roots: specific types of fungi that live inside the plant. We then take some of that sugar flow and in return get some benefits, but convert some of those sugars into a more stable form of carbon.” This ‘more stable’ form is less reactive with water, and happens to be melanin – the same compound responsible for skin pigmentation in humans.
These microscopic, mutualistic fungi deposit this melanin deeper under the surface where there is less oxygen, potentially keeping it securely stored for centuries....MORE

However, see also University of California-Irvine, June 29:
UCI researchers: carbon in Earth’s soil older than previously thought