Plant Health Care (PHC) 2007年年度报告「LSE」.pdf

1、Plant Health Care plc.1From inventor to investor.The inventorSometimes help comes from unexpected places.It was a power outagethat led Plant Health Care founder and Chief Scientist,Donald Marx,to animportant discovery in developing a unique,environmentally-friendly way tofoster plant growth.Marxs re

2、search career has been devoted to mycorrhizal fungi,which are vitalto plant health and have existed on plant roots for millions of years.While with the USDA Forest Service in the 1960s,he set up a greenhouseexperiment to grow these fungi on pine seedlings.One weekend,the powerwent out,shutting off t

3、he greenhouse cooling system.When he arrived the nextmorning,the temperature in the greenhouse had reached more than 130?F(55?C)and nearly all of the pineseedlings had died except one group.“Those seedlings inoculated with a specific fungus were thriving,”recallsMarx.The fungus seemed to have enable

4、d the plants to withstand the high temperatures.Later,he found the same fungus growing on tree roots in unlikely environments,such as the acidic,hot andhostile climates on strip mined coal spoils.Marx saw potential for it to be used to help reforest theseenvironmentally-stressed and drought-ridden a

5、reas.By the mid-1970s,his research team became the first to develop an inoculant of the fungus that could be applied tothe roots of tree seedlings in nurseries.They found that,when these seedlings were planted on the adverse coalspoils,they survived and grew normally,whereas seedlings without the fu

6、ngus died within a month.Following these initial successes,Marx tested the fungal technology in Africa,Mexico,South America,India,Europe and in China and found that it significantly increased the success of reforestation on cut-over and erodedland.Marx also won numerous awards for his pioneering wor