## UNEARTHING THE FUTURE: HOW THE WORLD'S LARGEST FUNGUS COLLECTION COULD REVOLUTIONIZE CARBON CAPTURE

Buried deep under the high canopy of trees in London’s Kew Gardens is a place that could one day help to keep large swathes of humanity alive: the fungarium, the world’s largest such collection. But this isn’t a story of solar-powered giants or vast root-systems. Instead, it’s a story that begins below the surface, in a racoon’s den underneath the garden’s canopy.

### THE EDGE OF DISCOVERY AT KEW'S FUNGUS LIBRARY

The fungarium at Kew, housed away from the garden’s main thoroughfares at its eastern extremity, is a repository of nature that is unique in the biodiversity bank. Its 1.3 million specimens represent the world’s fungi in a singular fashion, at once embodying the enigma at the heart of their existence and their evolution. This ‘library’, as the Kew curator Lee Davies prefers to call it, is not just a site of storage, or even so much as an archive. It’s an ultimate frontier in the realm of science, an active and living archive.

### FUNGI AT THE FOREFRONT: FROM OVERLOOKED TO CENTER STAGE

After years of occupying a minor place in conversations about the environment, mushrooms have become a major force, partly because of cultural media and partly because of science. Zombies, Armageddon and contemporary literature all point to a tectonic shift in how we perceive fungi – from non-playable characters in evolutionary drama to central characters in environmental tales.

### THE EDGE OF ECOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING

But the real action occurs on the chemical boundary layer of contemporary scientific thought, in the laboratories on the upper floors of a fungarium where researchers such as the mycologist Laura Martinez-Suz are documenting the way fungi contribute to the continual recycling of carbon into the soil. By confirming just how pivotal root-fungi networks are in reinforcing soil carbon storage as an overlooked mechanism of carbon capture, she and others in the field are increasing our knowledge of the mechanism by which fungi create the solid material of our beings.

### CARBON CAPTURE: UNVEILING THE UNDERGROUND NETWORK

Soil is the largest carbon sink on Earth: it contains nearly twice as much carbon as the atmosphere. That carbon was thought to come from plant litter: when roots and foliage die, they become part of the soil. But recently, research has shown that the vast majority of this carbon from soil actually comes from the interaction between those roots and fungi networks. These findings could change the way we think about mitigating carbon emissions.

### THE EDGE OF INNOVATIONS IN CARBON CAPTURE

Their implications are potentially huge: carbon capture, after all, is a key new front in the search for sustainable solutions. If we tap into the natural capabilities of fungi, we are poised for a revolution in ecological conservation and climate action. For clues about how to unlock novel, environmentally friendly ways of using the earth’s processes for mitigation, we might find them in those green cardboard boxes in Kew’s fungarium.

### THE EDGE OF TOMORROW: FOSTERING A FUNGAL FUTURE

The fact that fungi are being pushed right up against the fringes of this ecological frontier helps to show the just how wide the potential of fungi is open to exploration, but for society to benefit from this latent potential, we’ll need to unsettle the way we perceive, fund and prioritise our biological research. The journey that began in the darkness of our fungarium is moving towards a world in which fungi are not just exotic curiosities of the biological world, but the backbone of our ecological strategy.

### THE ESSENTIAL EDGE OF FUNGI EXPLAINED

The mycelia beneath the soil of our forests and fields are not just the organic straw that holds together dirt. They are nature’s most remarkable biotechnologists, the engines of biodiversity, the soilkeepers, and now perhaps the solution to the next generation of transformative carbon capture technologies. We have so far only just scratched the surface of the fungarium at Kew. As we begin to uncover the life hidden beneath our feet, we’re wading into the solutions to the most difficult of environmental problems.

By stretching the limits of what we know we can about these intricate eukaryotes, we increase our tolerance for the more-than-human world, and in turn, we build up our tools to mitigate climate change. Kew’s extensive fungus collection isn’t simply a collection of specimens in jars, it’s a signpost to a greener, fungi-empowered future.