06/17/2026
Our fungal-dominant living soils from organic practices give our estate vineyard better resilience to climate change and better terroir wine flavours.
As this article notes, the fungal network is complex. In our case, it includes a symbiotic partnership with the vine roots.
The largest network on Earth is made by fungi.
Scientists have now mapped Earth's underground fungal network and discovered it contains an estimated 68 quadrillion miles (110 quadrillion km) of microscopic threads known as hyphae.
If all of its microscopic threads were stretched into a single line, they would extend roughly 12,000 light-years through space.
That's enough to span a significant portion of the Milky Way galaxy.
The study focused on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, organisms that form vast underground partnerships with plants.
These fungi form partnerships with about 70 percent of plant species on Earth. They help plants absorb water and nutrients while receiving carbon produced through photosynthesis in return.
Scientists often describe them as part of Earth's underground circulatory system.
Every year, these fungal networks move an estimated 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide into soils, equivalent to about 11 percent of annual human-related carbon dioxide emissions.
The researchers estimate the global network contains roughly 300 megatons of carbon, about four to six times the biomass of all humans on Earth.
The study also found that grasslands contain around 40 percent of the world's fungal infrastructure, with especially dense networks predicted in places such as the Florida Everglades, South Sudan's flooded grasslands, and the Tibetan Plateau.
One surprising statistic highlights just how concentrated these networks can be: a single teaspoon of healthy soil may contain up to 32 feet (10 meters) of fungal threads.
To create the first global map of this hidden infrastructure, scientists analyzed more than 16,000 soil samples and used machine learning to estimate fungal densities across nearly every square mile of Earth's land surface.
Read the study:
"Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks." Science
