Mycorrhizal fungi are naturally occurring symbiotic fungi that build a network between plant roots and hyphae. These fungi are highly effective at nutrient absorption and can enhance crop yields and quality.
Mycorrhizal fungi also boost a plant’s resilience to disease and drought conditions. They improve root growth and reduce transplant shock and death rates.
Roots
Understanding the role of mycorrhizal fungi in cannabis cultivation is essential for growers who want to maximise their crop’s potential. Mycorrhizal fungi increase a plant’s root surface area and reach, which means that it can absorb more nutrients and water.
This also increases a plant’s resistance to many of the challenges that growers face. It can help combat soil diseases, drought conditions, salt stress, and even toxicities that may occur in the soil.
As a result, mycorrhizal fungi can increase a plant’s nutrient uptake and yields. This is particularly true for nitrogen, phosphorus, and micronutrients such as iron, zinc, and manganese.
Mycorrhizal fungi can be naturally found in most soils, or they can be introduced by cultivators using a variety of methods. One way to introduce beneficial fungi into a growing soil is by using a granular mycorrhizal inoculant. These granules can be mixed with compost or added directly to the soil or plants roots.
Another method is to add spores or propagules. These are reproductive structures of mycorrhizal fungi that can colonize the root system and help resist stress.
Some of these spores can be viable, which means they can survive for an extended period in a healthy environment. Others are not, so it’s important to check the product’s label for a breakdown of its spore count.
If you’re looking for an easy and cost-effective way to improve your cannabis crop’s nutrient uptake, consider using mycorrhizal fungi. They can be used in conjunction with other cannabis-growing techniques to maximize your harvest. You can also mix them with a natural pesticide like Trifecta Crop Control to keep your crop healthy and pest-free throughout the growing season.
Leaves
As cannabis cultivation becomes more widespread in countries with legalization, it’s important for growers to understand the role mycorrhizal fungi play in their cannabis crop. These beneficial fungi can improve a cannabis plant’s ability to extract nutrients, water and other elements. They can also help prevent certain soil-borne pests and diseases from harming your crop.
Whether you’re growing indoors or outdoors, mycorrhizal fungi are an essential tool for successful cannabis cultivation. Adding them to your growing medium is simple and inexpensive.
Mycorrhizal fungi are found throughout the world and have symbiotic relationships with most plants. They colonize the roots of plants and create a network that enables them to extract water, nutrients, and other elements from the soil.
The most common form of mycorrhizal fungi is arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). These fungi penetrate the cells of plant roots and create an arbuscule within them that allows nutrients from photosynthesis to exchange with water, minerals, and other elements.
In addition to bringing life to your soil, mycorrhizal fungi create a living rhizosphere, an ecosystem that helps other microorganisms thrive. When used in conjunction with other growing media and inputs, mycorrhizal fungi can bring high-value benefits to your plant including improved trichome density, greater yield, higher potency, improved terpene profile, and stress resistance.
For best results, add mycorrhizal fungi to your growing media before planting. You can do this either by dusting your rootball with a mycorrhizal inoculant or by placing it under the soil during repotting.
Flowers
Understanding the role of mycorrhizal fungi in cannabis cultivation is essential to growing healthy, robust plants that produce the maximum yield possible. These fungi can help your crop by mitigating disease, increasing nutrient absorption, reducing water stress, and enhancing the growth of the plant itself.
Mycorrhizal fungi are naturally present in most soils and growers can attract them through their use of compost and other organic matter. When cultivated, mycorrhizal fungi form a subterranean network that can protect your plants against microbial diseases and pests as well as increase the efficiency of nutrient uptake.
These fungi can also boost the production of terpenes and cannabinoids that are responsible for your crop’s unique flavor and smell. By stimulating these chemical processes, your plant will become more resilient and productive while maximizing the quality of its flowers and leaves.
When grown under optimal conditions, mycorrhizal fungi can improve the absorption rate of your plants root system by 700%. This translates to faster growth, better stress resistance, higher yields, and an increased concentration of cannabinoids and terpenes.
There are many different types of mycorrhizal inoculants that growers can use to improve their soil health and make their crops more productive. Depending on your needs, you can choose from either powder or granular formulations that you mix into the growing medium.
Soluble mycorrhizae: These products are liquid and can be used to drench the soil or applied directly to established plants. Ensure you reach deep into your soil when using these products and never expose them to sunlight.
Alternatively, you can grow your own mycorrhizal spores to spread on your crop to enhance its performance and potential. This is a fairly inexpensive and easy process that requires minimal maintenance to be successful.
Trichomes
The trichomes that appear on cannabis buds are the glands that produce cannabinoids and terpenoids. They are tiny structures, ranging from 50-100 micrometers wide (1000 microns is 1mm).
Trichomes are also found on other plants and lichens as well as algae and protists such as certain moulds and plant-like protophyta. They serve a variety of purposes, including defence and nutrient absorption, but in cannabis they are mostly responsible for enhancing flowering time and the production of essential oils.
There are three main types of trichomes. These include absorbing trichomes, capitate-stalked trichomes and bulbous trichomes.
All three trichomes are similar in that they have a stalk supporting a bulbous, spherical head that contains the glands responsible for synthesis of cannabinoids and terpenoids. However, they differ in their shape and size.
Bulbous trichomes are the smallest, with a range of about 50-100 micrometers in width. They are shaped like a mushroom and have a stalk that holds a head comprised of epidermal and hypodermic cells. This gland head, held together by a waxy cuticle layer, is the epicenter for cannabinoid and terpenoid synthesis.
Adding mycorrhizal fungi to your soil will increase the number of trichomes on your cannabis plants, which can result in better yield and quality. In addition, introducing mycorrhizal fungi will make it easier for your cannabis plants to absorb nutrients from the soil.
Using mycorrhizal fungi in your grow room is relatively simple and inexpensive. It simply involves placing a thin layer of mycorrhizal fungi-infested soil under the first inch of your planting medium. Then, when your seeds germinate and sprout, the roots of these seedlings will grow through this mycorrhizal-infested soil. This will create a healthy symbiosis between the plants and the fungi that will then help with nutrient absorption, boosting root growth and yieldsize.
Seeds
Mycorrhizal fungi have a critical role to play in cannabis cultivation. These fungi form a symbiotic relationship with plant roots, which makes it easier for plants to capture the nutrients they need. In return, the fungi make the plant’s roots more resistant to drought and disease.
Mycorrhizae are the most effective way to provide cannabis growers with the added boost they need to produce high-quality flowers, strong yields and healthy plants. These fungi are often used in combination with other inputs for optimal results and are available from seed, cuttings and even as a top feed.
Adding mycorrhizal fungi to your growing media is easy and can be done at every stage of a crop’s development. For example, using mycorrhizal inoculant at the seedling phase, or at every repotting, can increase the likelihood of successful colonization by the plant’s roots.
A mycorrhizal inoculant is a liquid or powdery substance that contains viable spores of the mycorrhizal fungus. It can be sprinkled onto the soil before planting, or rolled into a rootball before transplanting.
Most mycorrhizal products list the propagules count, which indicates how many spores are included in the product. Spores are the reproductive structures of the mycorrhizal spore, and they can be viable (can colonize and help resist stresses) or non-viable (can’t colonize roots).
The most important thing to remember when purchasing mycorrhizal products is that they should be made of viable spores. Fungi that can’t colonize the roots of cannabis plants will not be of much use to your plant.
There are many ways to add mycorrhizal fungi into your growing medium, but the best and most cost-effective option is to use a mycorrhizal inoculant. These are specially formulated to deliver the right strains of mycorrhizal fungi that are suited for the needs of medical cannabis.
