‘Super soil’ may save millions of ash trees
A FUNGAL disease that is strangling the life out of Britain’s 80 million ash trees could be thwarted by the discovery of a natural soil treatment.
An “enriched biochar”, which combines a purified form of charcoal with fungi, seaweed and worm casts, could help ash trees resist ash dieback disease, research by the tree and shrub care company Bartlett Tree Experts suggests.
A three-year study of 2,000 established ash trees in Essex found that a third of the trees monitored became infected with the fungus that causes the disease, Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, while none of the 20 trees which had enriched biochar applied to their roots were affected.
Ash dieback, which could kill millions of ash trees, was first identified in the UK in 2012, and experts fear it could have the same devastating impact on the country’s landscape as Dutch elm disease in the 1970s.
Dr Glynn Percival, head plant physiologist at the Bartlett Tree Research Laboratory, said: “While we cannot claim this to be a cure for ash dieback, we are clear that it has a beneficial impact. We will need to run further trials to be clear on its qualities to prevent the disease taking hold, but this is an important discovery and we believe using enriched biochar could help improve the survival prospects for the UK’s ash trees.”
He said that the biochar, which has been developed by the company, Carbon Gold, in collaboration with Bartlett, could also have positive benefits for protecting trees from other significant diseases.
The Hymenoscyphus fraxineus fungus strips trees of their leaves or weakens them to the point where they are easily killed by other pathogens. About 90 per cent of trees die in areas where it is established.
The Woodland Trust, which is involved in studies to find natural resistance to the disease in ash trees, said the results from the biochar trial “seemed promising”.
Nick Atkinson, conservation adviser for the trust, said: “European ash is an important native species and we could see the loss of many millions of trees, which will have a huge impact on the wildlife they support.”