Soil health with Marc-Andre Selosse
Everything you need to know about vineyard soils:
- 9 mins: what is soil fertility and the importance of fungi (fairy rings!)
- 11 mins: how nutrients are dissolved from rocks and turned into plant available forms
- 12:30 mins: how Nitrogen is transformed from gas in air to amino acids needed in plants
- 14:30 mins: film of earthworms ‘mixing’ the soil how wormcasts incorporate how the symbiotic relationship works between the vine’s roots and the fungi
- 15:45 mins: plant roots involvement in adding carbon and obtaining nutrients
- 17:00 mins: importance of soil pores and worms adding to permeability
- 19:30 mins: mycorrhizae – film of how fungi grows towards and into roots, channelling minerals and water to root while root channels sugars to fungi
- 21:30 mins: fungi are part of terroir
- 23:30 mins: is it worth inoculating? New startup Mycophyto amplifying your fungi so locally adapted
- 27 mins: what tilling does to the soil (compaction, destroying fungi)
- 31 mins: why you should use prunings as mulch and add organic matter to soil instead of mineral fertilisers (the more you add phosphate, the lower the mycorrhizal associations)
- 34:30 mins: keeping roots in the ground to avoid erosion/soil run off and so vines can share mycellium with them when they don’t have leaves to photosynthesise, also to avoid phosphate leaching in winter
- 37 mins: different roles of different plants (eg long rooted radish to decompact the soil, others to diminish pathogens, retain water)
- 39 mins: do cover crops compete for water? This is a myth. Vine roots are very deep. There is only competition if you have bad practices: bare soils and the vine roots stay at the surface, claypans from tillage so the roots can’t penetrate, mineral fertiliser applied at the surface.
- 43:30 mins: aromas in wines with water deficit
- 44:30 summary
