Fungi in soil and associated substrates (plant roots, decaying wood, etc.) are major players in global nutrient and carbon cycling, and essential for boreal forest ecosystem functioning and health. As there are an estimated 1.5 million fungal species, the many roles of fungi can only be fully appreciated if the fungi can be identified from the environment. “Fungi in boreal soils” is a Nordforsk sponsored research network with emphasis on implementation of high-through-put sequencing technologies and identification arrays for fungal ecology research. Our network includes 15 research groups in North Europe. 

The aims for the network are:

• To promote emerging sequencing technologies in fungal ecology research.
• To develop a unified nomenclature and database structure for environmental sequences and associated data.
• To co-ordinate experimental planning in order to make supplementary data available for meta-analyses and modeling efforts.
• To organize the development of a forest fungal identification microarray.
• To offer PhD training in fungal molecular ecology.
• To provide a forum for fungal ecology research co-ordination and “hard money” applications e.g. EU FP7 calls.

The new network will pursue the work initiated by the former UNITE network. We also aims at having a close collaboration with the North America FESIN network that is largely focusing on the same subjects as we are.

The network is sponsored by Nordforsk