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Do fungi neutralize glyphosate?

 
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I am assuming possibly "Yes" as I have watched Paul Stamets amazing work of how fungi take apart compounds.....But wondering if anyone knows of studies or how many years it would be, to safely grow on a nuc-ed patch of earth that was treated with Round-Up? Thoughts?
 
pollinator
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Cindy Ruprecht
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Thanks Tyler for the articles, but they don't answer my question specifically. I'm referring to the healing process over time and degradation, not so much the initial insult to the soil. And which species of fungi would be able to dismantle glyphosate.
 
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I think that bacteria are supposed to be responsible for breaking down glyphosate. I have people say half life ranges from 50-100 days although I'm sure it varies pretty significantly depending temperature and what your soil life looks like and possibly who is doing the study. Also some people are considered about the AMPA that it degrades into.
 
Cindy Ruprecht
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AMPA it degrades into? Please elaborate...
 
Aaron Peretz
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I am not really an expert on this but I'll give you my sort of broken understanding of it. Essentially there is some part of the glyphosate compound that is readily available as nutrients or energy to certain soil microorganisms (I believe several types of bacteria) and so they will somewhat quickly break off that piece and use it. The result of this break down is Aminomethylphosphonic Acid or AMPA and so it is the first step in the degradation of glyphosate. I think when people say 50-100 days half life of glyphosate in the soil it means that in that amount of time half the glyphosate is turned into AMPA. I am not sure how long it takes for this compound to break down and I have heard of people having some concerns about the negative effects of AMPA although again I am not sure what these are supposed to be.

Sorry I don't have more information hope this is sort of helpful. Anyone who knows any better please correct me if I've written anything completely false.
 
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Neutralize is not exactly the right word to use, digest would be better. To understand fungi better, you have to get your mind around the idea that fungi have their stomachs on the OUTSIDE of their bodies. That's right, instead of taking in food and then applying digestive enzymes to break it down, they do it backwards -- they exude digestive enzymes, which break down some of the material around them, and then they ingest it as nutrients. Now if some of the material around them was glyphosate, the enzymes might turn it into ammonia, phosphate, and acetate, all of which are yummy nutrients to a fungus.

Glyphosate is not that long-lived in the environment; sunlight tends to degrade it. This is possibly a good feature from the point of view of the manufacturer, because it will need to be reapplied and thus they can sell more of it. Between sunlight and fungal action, there shouldn't be much left after 3 months or so.

The electric line maintenance crew got to part of my property before I saw them and could call off their Roundup spraying. That was two weeks ago, and already weeds are beginning to re-emerge in the sprayed area.
 
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One year my partner sprayed Round Up in late Feb or early Mar around some of our apple trees. I hate when he sprays stuff like that but...in Apr that year there were morels there. Quite large ones at that. Left them there. He hasn't sprayed since and they didn't come back. It could be that the RU spray gave the spores more light.
 
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