Documentary

Toby Kiers

in The Underground Astronaut

Character

Toby Kiers

Director

Marleine van der Werf

Country

Italy/Netherlands

Duration

17 min

Year

2023

Beneath our feet lies a mystery. A complex underground network of mycorrhizal fungi keeps our ecosystem alive by exchanging nutrients and carbon with almost all plants on Earth. Remarkably, no one knows exactly how these sophisticated and ancient systems operate, or how they are affected by climate change.

The Underground Astronaut follows evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers, named one of the 2022 TIME100 Next Innovators, on her quest to map the world’s fungi networks and understand their behaviour before it’s too late. A fragrant and urgent journey underground. 'No fungi, no future.'

About Toby Kiers

Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers’ (1976) groundbreaking research on fungi is drawing considerable attention from the international media, including Time Magazine and The New York Times. Her mission is to map the world’s unknown fungal networks. This is of critical importance because, according to Kiers, they are indispensable to our ecosystem and store large amounts of CO2 – a key weapon in our fight against global warming.

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