Amping up grassland restoration with fungi March 31, 2026

When your phone’s low battery signal flashes, but you’re too far from a socket, you’d naturally reach for an extension cord. Did you know that some fungi in the soil also help plants plug in to and supercharge their uptake of water and nutrients, where they haven’t been able to reach before?

This superpower is what piqued the interest of the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) and Lethbridge Polytechnic Professor Adriana Morrell. With funding from Alberta Innovates, NCC and Adriana’s team are trying to find out if we can effectively restore degraded grasslands where natural regeneration has been unsuccessful, by inoculating native grasses with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF).

AMF is a group of fungi that can form beneficial relationships (symbiosis) with more than 80 per cent of plant families on the planet! It’s like that friend who gets along with everyone. This friendly relationship works by AMF providing nutrients and water that are otherwise out of reach for the plants and, in return, the plants provide carbohydrates for the fungi to thrive.

Reclaiming a coal-mined area for nature

To find out how well AMF works in restoration, the teams picked NCC’s Cervo 2 property in the Crowsnest Pass, which features a mix of steep slopes and upland grassland areas. The surrounding area was mined for coal from 1907 to 1915, while the NCC property experienced smaller disturbances like levelling and soil compaction from a rail line, roads and other mining infrastructure. Also, topsoil was stripped in other areas. As a result of these soil disturbances, there are areas here where it is hard to establish native plants.

Since 2023, NCC has been partnering with Adriana’s team to find out how native grasses respond to growing in disturbed areas at Cervo 2. It turns out that Idaho fescue and rough fescue grasses showed high AMF colonization in the roots and the grasses grew well in the disturbed area, suggesting that with AMF symbiosis, these two fescue grasses can thrive under less-than-ideal environments.

In 2024, Adriana partnered with Professor Srijak Bhatnagar from Athabasca University/University of Calgary to begin a four-year research project examining how soil fungal and bacterial communities influence carbon storage, as well as soil health in grasslands under restoration in Alberta. Their research is also looking at the effectiveness of mycorrhizal amendments (commercial products) in Prairie ecosystem restoration and how they affect soil microbes.

To start the project, seed was collected from the Cervo 2 property, seedlings were inoculated with different AMF inoculants at the Mycology Research Laboratory, and grown into grass plugs in the greenhouse at Lethbridge Polytechnic. In the spring of 2025, Adriana’s and Srijak’s teams together with NCC staff planted the grass plugs at two research sites on the Cervo 2 property and continued to monitor them every two weeks.

Partnering to deliver solutions grounded in science

Adriana says this work has been a powerful example of what collaboration can achieve — bringing together researchers, restoration practitioners, community partners and students under a shared commitment to restoring sensitive landscapes.

She thinks there is something incredibly powerful about getting your hands dirty in the field and translating scientific knowledge into tangible action. “For me, the most meaningful part is passing that knowledge onto students and watching them grow into confident environmental professionals.

Knowing that our collective efforts are helping rebuild ecosystems while safeguarding them for future generations makes this work deeply rewarding and meaningful. I am sincerely grateful to the funders and partners who believe in this vision and make it possible.”

From 2026 to 2027, NCC will continue to support monitoring the planted grass plugs. In addition, Adriana’s team will study the effects of the AMF commercial amendments to support the native grasses and conduct a complete assessment of plant establishment, health and survival at the restoration sites while Srijak’s team maps microbial communities at the molecular level.

Restoration takes time, but the results of are often worth it

Just as you can’t grow a tree in a day, it can take years for restoration efforts to take root. The main challenges at Cervo 2 are invasive and non-native species that compete with native species, a short growing season, warm and dry summers, coupled with the eroding effects from high winds and heavy rain on the steep slopes.

We are hopeful that AMF can speed up restoration and help plants better establish in these challenging conditions. While plant establishment can range from two to five years, anything that can help in those first few years will be critical to the success of any restoration project.

AMF might be small, but we have big hopes for their potential in restoration to improve our efficiency and scale, making it possible for nature to thrive.