The
soil beneath our feet is mega-diverse yet much less studied than outer space and this is despite us living on it and depending upon it for almost all of our food!
This sorry situation may be about to change as the
United Nations Environment Programme and the
Global Environment Facility (GEF) have just set up a
major international project designed to study and exploit the useful properties of the millions of unknown
soil bacteria, fungi and small organisms that live there without us noticing.