Ukrainian Mycologists Are Not Giving Up
- Kang-Chun Cheng 鄭康君
- 4 minutes ago
- 7 min read
A Dispatch from Our Editor-at-Large
Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Kang-Chun Cheng covers how environmental change impacts one's sense of belonging, foreign aid, and outdoor adventure. She has reported for us from some of the most inaccessible locations on Earth, including war-torn Ukraine and South Sudan (pictured).
Entering the M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, feels a bit like stepping back in time. Its reception is regal, adorned with fairy-tale-like towering statues of unfolding flowers. The mycology department, which studies fungi, has buttercup-yellow walls and old fridges crammed with more than 1,500 fungal strains across 270 species.
But outside these walls, Kyiv is at war. More than four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the mycologists at Kholodny have been forced to adapt to increasingly difficult working conditions. Although the Institute itself remains undamaged at the time of writing, Russian attacks on Kyiv have grown in scale. In one of the largest assaults in June, Russia launched 656 drones and 73 missiles overnight, according to Ukraine’s Air Force, with Kyiv among the main targets. In July, the National Institute of Biochemistry was gutted in an airstrike that damaged 130 buildings in Kyiv and killed at least 30 people.
“It's hard to describe [our reality] in words,” Margarita Lomberg, a microbiologist who has worked at Kholodny for more than three decades, says. “After a hard, sleepless night under shelling, we have to gather ourselves and work… How can we stay on the same level as other researchers if we are in much worse conditions? We are often without light, water, the ability to get to work, not to mention people dying, broken flats.”
The war has eroded the capacity of scientific institutions across Ukraine to conduct research. Founded in 1921, Kholodny’s collection of fungi is the largest of its kind in Ukraine and a national heritage site, recognized by the government as a site of scientific significance.
“How can we stay on the same level as other researchers if we are in much worse conditions? We are often without light, water, the ability to get to work, not to mention people dying, broken flats.”
“Mycology is as important as any other science,” Lomberg says. “If we talk specifically about [Kholodny’s] mushroom culture collection, it is a national treasure. It’s very important to preserve the cultures of rare, endangered mushroom species along with biotechnologically important species for future generations.”
Fungi are integral to the functioning of ecosystems, says Alisa Atamanchuk, a researcher specializing in fungal cultivation. The culture collection is vital for ex situ fungal conservation, ensuring the preservation of rare and endangered species, along with high-yield strains of edible fungi, vital for addressing food security challenges.
When War Disrupts Science
Air raid sirens can disrupt the workflow at Kholodny more than a dozen times a day.
Galeb Al-Maali, a researcher who focuses on fungal antibiotics, apologizes for how dated the building and its facilities appear. I tell him that it adds to the charm. He leads me to his office and the few laboratory spaces, shared between 17 researchers.
There’s also the antibiotic research Al-Maali is specializing in: “Each newly isolated strain is a potential source of biologically active compounds: antibiotics, anticancer agents, immunomodulators, enzymes, and other substances that could find applications in medicine, agriculture, food industry, and biotechnology,” Atamanchuk explains.
Suspending or postponing experiments compromises their results, Al-Maali explains.
The war has also led to ongoing power cuts, taking a toll on the scientists and their projects at Kholodny and across the country. Inconsistent temperatures can lead to the death of the mushroom cells or the degradation of chemicals used in experiments. Consecutive days’ worth of power outages due to shelling make it impossible to keep strains alive, let alone continue with research.
“We warmed ourselves with heaters, tea, and burned alcohol burners, which we usually use to reseed the culture collection.”
“Expensive reagents [which need to be kept at -20ºC] are spoiling in refrigerators,” Al-Maali wrote to me last December. “We have a large collection of fungi — which are also stored at low temperatures — that are currently under threat of extinction.”
Some mushroom cultures that had to be kept at room temperature were destroyed by freezing temperatures over the winter. Summer heat now brings a risk of losing valuable reagents that require deep freezing, Lomberg says, which have become difficult to procure with logistical constraints from the war.
Al-Maali estimates that this past winter killed about 50 of their fungal strains, which need to be kept at 4ºC — some of which have been around for more than 100 years, since the founding of the institute.
Lomberg describes how the lab worked remotely during the coldest days in January, when temperatures plunged to -40ºC and public transportation was not running, bringing life throughout the city to a standstill.
“As soon as we were informed that there was electricity, everyone came to work and tried to do the most necessary things in time,” she recounts. “We warmed ourselves with heaters, tea, and burned alcohol burners, which we usually use to reseed the culture collection.”
The Difficulty of Sampling
Kholodny falls under the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and receives government support. “The underfunding of science in general existed before the war, unfortunately,” Lomberg explains. The war has only exacerbated budgetary constraints, making it challenging to maintain facilities and equipment — and keep all the fungi alive — with limited resources.
“We have a large collection of fungi — which are also stored at low temperatures — that are currently under threat of extinction.”
Logistical challenges in transporting new fungal samples and experimental chemicals — particularly those requiring specialized storage conditions — have also made it harder for researchers to continue their work.
Kyiv airport shut down on February 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Road and rail are now the only ways to travel in and out of Ukraine. The 18-hour train journey from Poland, Ukraine’s western neighbor, to Kyiv can be grueling, with lengthy delays when Russian attacks intensify.
Mycologists used to gather samples from across Ukraine, from the highlands of the Hutsulshchyna nature reserve in the west to the forests of eastern Kharkiv. Drone and missile strikes, along with landmines and other explosive remnants of war, have made travel difficult and sample collection limited. (Ukraine currently has some of the most landmines in the world, a headache for everyone ranging from foragers to radiobiologists).
For example, mycorrhizal fungi depend on living plant roots and can only be grown in symbiosis with trees or plants — a process that cannot be replicated in a lab, according to Atamanchuk.
At the beginning of her doctoral studies before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Atamanchuk put out a call for civilians to mail in fungal strains from across Ukraine on the public Facebook Group Гриби України (Mushrooms of Ukraine).
“It was simply a practical way to expand the geographic scope of my research despite limited opportunities for fieldwork,” she explains, having received about 20 different samples.
This citizen science initiative was particularly effective because species of Xylaria — the dark, upright, club-shaped, cylindrical or branched fungi she studies — are relatively easy to recognize in the field.
The department also used to receive new strains from researchers abroad — ranging from Czechia to China. That has halted now, Atamanchuk explains.
It is also difficult to determine the extent of pollution in soil and fungal samples in regions where military operations have taken place, explains Al-Maali. Mushrooms can accumulate higher concentrations of toxins than other plants because their extensive mycelial networks spread through the soil, where they can absorb contaminants, including heavy metals.
“As with other man-made disasters, we see that the consequences last for decades,” Al-Maali says. For example, decades after the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, edible mushrooms collected in the Chornobyl-affected areas of Ukraine continued to contain elevated levels of radioactive cesium-137.
‘Many Scientists Have Died’
Although scientists and researchers working at critical infrastructure institutions are given special status, Al-Maali’s department has nevertheless suffered serious losses.
“Some of the scientists who had a deferment from the military joined the army to defend [Ukraine],” Lomberg says. “Unfortunately, many of them have already died.”
Alongside the consistent brain drain caused by displacement, young scientists from across the world can no longer choose Ukraine as a place of work. “A large number of young people have left the country; this affects the number of biology students,” says Al-Maali. “There is no influx of young scientists.”
“I don't think that someone who has not had the experience of surviving during war can understand the conditions in which people live and work in Ukraine.”
The three researchers — Al-Maali, Lomberg, and Atamanchuk — show me fungal cultures as the afternoon wears on. The mood is subdued, and the researchers’ faces are lined with accumulated fatigue and stress.
“I don't think that someone who has not had the experience of surviving during war can understand the conditions in which people live and work in Ukraine,” Lomberg says.
Kholodny’s mycologists donate money to the military even when they are struggling to make ends meet. “We have to do everything possible to win over the enemies so that this terrible war can end,” says Lomberg.
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The department’s research on cultivating edible and medicinal mushrooms has twice received Ukraine’s State Prize in Science and Technology during two crucial turning points in Ukrainian history: in 1989, at the start of the Ukrainian Revolution, which saw the country gain its independence; and in 2005, in the immediate aftermath of the Orange Revolution.
Today, those achievements serve as a reminder of what the scientists are fighting to preserve through the war.
