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Re: [compost_tea] saprophytic fungi



Most fungi are saprophytic, that is they use dead organic matter as their source of food.  The greatest number of species fall in this category.

Pathogenic and parasitic fungi use living organic matter as their sources of food.    Pathogens typically cause the death of the host, while parasites do not.  Mycorrhizal fungi are parasites, from a certai npoint of view, except that they benefit the host, and thus we call them mutualists.  Both host and fungus benefit. 

Some fungi can be saprobes, or saprophytic, and pathogens at different times, depending on whether they are using dead organic matter or living organic matter. 

I hope you meant "biggest" in the sense of number of species.  Or did you mean biggest in the sense of size of the organisms?  The most beneficial species of fungi tend to have the widest diameter hyphae.  That's a generalization, a few species of pathogens have wide diameter hyphae, but then those conditions usually select for the presence of a set of not-wide-diameter fungi also.  So whole one or two bad guys are big, the community in a sick soil is not in general going to have wide diameter hyphae.  

OK?

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com
SFI Oregon, USA
SFI Australia
SFI New York
SFI Europe
SFI New Zealand

"Hope is not a feeling. It is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the conviction that what we are doing makes sense, no matter how things turn out."   --  Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic


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