Control of Soil Fungi.
In the preceding sections an attempt has been made to sketch rapidly the chief outlines of the widespread relationships of soil fungi and of the fundamental part that they play in the biochemical changes occurring in the soil. It will be evident, even from this survey, that their occurrence is of the utmost agricultural importance, both when helpful as in mycorrhizal relationships or as agents in making complex organic materials available as plant food, or when harmful as when causal agents of disease in plants. It is clear that could the soil fungi be controlled to human ends by the encouragement of the useful forms and the elimination of the harmful, a valuable power would be placed in the hands of the grower of plants. Certain aspects of this control, the cruder and more destructive perhaps, are already practicable, whilst the finer and more constructive aspects remain possibilities of to-morrow.
Theoretically, the technique of control is selective in that it aims to determine one or more particular fungi, leaving the remaining flora untouched. Its highest expression is seen, perhaps, in the utilisation of pure cultures of mycorrhizal fungi for horticultural purposes, such as orchid cultivation, but there is no reason why this should not be done for other purposes on a field scale similar to the way in which cultures of special strains of the root nodule organisms of legumes are employed. A second aspect is the direct encouragement of special components of the fungus flora for particular purposes by selective feeding. Thus, in a laboratory experiment, McBeth and Scales[43] record an increase of 2000 times in cellulose-destroying and other soil fungi by this method. It has been pointed out that soil fungus activities such as ammonification, proteolysis and carbohydrate decomposition are controlled by factorial equilibria, and for special purposes it would seem feasible to weight the balance so that particular activities may be favoured. A further step in this direction is the controlling of particular physical conditions so that the activities of certain fungi may be restricted. Professor L. R. Jones[30] and his colleagues at Madison have shown the primary importance of the control of the soil temperature in certain parasitic relationships; the work of Gillespie and Hurst[25] and later workers has demonstrated that the parasitism of certain species and strains of Actinomyces upon the potato is conditioned by definite ranges of soil acidity; and many other relationships of similar nature are known. Data along such lines are rapidly accumulating, and in certain cases are already susceptible of practical application. In other cases, particular soil fungi are less open to persuasive influences, and more drastic treatment needs to be adopted. Certain chemicals mixed intimately with the soil increase or diminish the numbers of particular fungi or groups of fungi; whilst these organisms may be totally eliminated from the soil by wet or dry heat for definite periods or by treatment with potent fungicides such as formaldehyde. Although soil sterilisation and crude treatment in other ways has been practised for decades, the possibility of a more delicate control of soil fungi is only now being realised. Its concrete expression will depend upon the progress that is made in exact knowledge of the activities of soil fungi under natural and controlled conditions, of the balance of factors in the environment which controls any particular function and of the genetic nature of the soil fungi which occur. Each of these aspects is a fruitful field of study.