Beneath every forest, meadow and garden runs a hidden web: mycorrhizal fungi, threads finer than hair, woven through the soil and into the roots of most plants on Earth. The plants pay the fungi in carbon; the fungi pay the plants in water and nutrients; the whole underground economy is one of the oldest partnerships in nature. Evolutionary biologist Dr Toby Kiers has spent her career proving just how much this invisible world matters, and this year the work won her the 2026 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, often called the Nobel Prize of the environment.
Her team's research suggests that billions of tonnes of carbon flow from plants into these fungal networks every year, making the ground beneath us one of the planet's great quiet carbon keepers. Her group is now mapping the networks around the world, so the day is coming when an underground forest can be protected the way we protect the one above it. The prize comes with 215,000 euros; the recognition, for the fungi, is priceless.
Our short take: the full story is by Angela Symons for Euronews Green, 2026. Cover photograph: a small woodland mushroom by Donald Olszewski, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.