Tomatoville® Gardening Forums - View Single Post - Mycorrhizae..can I get more bang for my $$$?

RayR · July 7, 2013

There's more than 2 posts to that thread, you have to scroll down further on the page to see all the replies. Yahoo groups can be confusing.

Manufacturers include Trichoderma spores along with mycorrhizae because there is no real world evidence that Trichoderma actively prey on Myco's in soil. I know about the in vitro experiments that showed that they will, but if that's the only food source available, what else would you expect them to do? Soil is not a controlled laboratory experiment, nor is it compost tea. In the soil environment the two seem to coexist just fine. If you read the whole thread, the debate is pretty interesting.

As far as "brewing a batch" of Trichoderma, GT87 is right that they need a substrate to grow on and a bubbling liquid culture is not ideal for that. The work General Hydroponics did in Europe with bioponics showed that they can do well in a liquid culture as long as there is a substrate to grow on (in that case they use a biofilter placed in the reservoir as a place where the fungi can colonize)

July 7, 2013	#73
RayR Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Cheektowaga, NY Posts: 2,466	There's more than 2 posts to that thread, you have to scroll down further on the page to see all the replies. Yahoo groups can be confusing. Manufacturers include Trichoderma spores along with mycorrhizae because there is no real world evidence that Trichoderma actively prey on Myco's in soil. I know about the in vitro experiments that showed that they will, but if that's the only food source available, what else would you expect them to do? Soil is not a controlled laboratory experiment, nor is it compost tea. In the soil environment the two seem to coexist just fine. If you read the whole thread, the debate is pretty interesting. As far as "brewing a batch" of Trichoderma, GT87 is right that they need a substrate to grow on and a bubbling liquid culture is not ideal for that. The work General Hydroponics did in Europe with bioponics showed that they can do well in a liquid culture as long as there is a substrate to grow on (in that case they use a biofilter placed in the reservoir as a place where the fungi can colonize) Last edited by RayR; July 7, 2013 at 03:39 AM.