Botanists from Trinity College Dublin have made a breakthrough discovery that could save barley farmers sleepless nights and millions of Euro each year: naturally occurring plant-friendly fungi. These organisms prevent crop-ravishing diseases from spreading, and also aid plant survival in more challenging environmental conditions, according to the researchers.

Importantly, the fungi cause no harm to the plant roots amongst which they live. However, their immunity to common seed diseases greatly reduces the need for farmers to spray environmentally damaging chemicals, which can affect ecosystems in a plethora of negative ways.

Barley, which as a hardy plant is often grown in more challenging conditions, is the fourth most important global cereal crop.

Trinity College scientist Brian Murphy is lead author of a report published in the journal BioControl. Murphy said, "Irish farmers spend over €99 million annually on chemical crop inputs for barley, 70% of which is spent on nitrogenous fertilisers. As well as being expensive, these chemicals can cause serious environmental damage and even biodiversity loss. Our innovative crop treatment has the potential to significantly reduce these costs and contribute to sustainable and organic agricultural practices."

The Trinity researcher said laboratory experiments identified potential symbiotic relationships between barley plants and fungal ‘endophytes’, which were effective in suppressing disease. As well as warding off seed diseases, it seems that the endophytes confer other significant benefits; plants that faced multiple stresses at the same time (such as heat, drought, poor nutrient soils, and pests) were around six times as likely to survive if they were housing their fungal friends than those grown without the fungi.

"These symbiotic relationships are therefore a real case of life and death for the plants, as well as for many of the farmers relying on these crops," added Brian Murphy.

The endophytes occur naturally in agricultural soils, and in some cases, plants might already be exposed to them by chance. However, due to their relative inability to move from field to field, and to regular crop rotation and pesticide use, the chance of a union occurring naturally between barley and the most effective endophytes is likely very small. As a result, the Trinity team are looking into ways of inoculating crops preferentially.

The next step is to see whether the results from the laboratory hold true in field trials. If applying the endophytes to crops in the wild does prove as successful, the Trinity team claim their findings could be a leap forward for efforts to produce more food whilst impacting less on the environment.

Also commenting on the research, Associate Professor in Botany at Trinity's School of Natural Sciences, Dr Trevor Hodkinson, added, "The major challenge for agriculture is to increase crop yields while moving towards more sustainable farming systems. These naturally occuring fungal root endophytes offer huge potential to reduce agriculture's reliance on environmentally damaging chemical inputs. We are looking to scale up the research into the field and commercialise the technology."