This current experiment has come from the trials Alan has been doing, looking at various inoculated substrates that have germinate Ophrys apifera. In this trial sterile soil was inoculated with fungi from Alan's mother flask on the 30th July, and immediately sown with Ophrys sphegodes seed. This seed was not sterilised and 4 weeks to the day we have seed germination, image attached.
Isolating the fungi is going to be a challenge as it does not seem to like being cultured on agar and seems to prefer growing on the roof of the petri dish rather than in the agar... I am also running in parallel a set of isolation tests on sterilised soil and cardboard as the fungi seems to prefer this type of environment.
Ideally we’d like to isolate a single suitable fungus and maintain it in culture. Experience tells me that these ‘Ophrys fungi’ don’t like to grow on agar ( and when you do get them to grow (weakly) on agar - they don’t germinate orchid seeds in the normal way (like a Dactylorhiza with B1 for example).
Something is missing. Something (or things) that is present in the more complex cardboard / soil medium is needed. The big question is what’s missing?
We keep trying. It might be something very simple - just staring us in the face - obvious ??!