I would not have thought that making a short posting concerning a new term, BioChar,  would unleash such an interest in soils.  But you can learn something everyday.  For me, BioChar, represents a potential but partial solution to our reliance on foreign crude oil?  Seems like a huge amount of political energy with less than certain benefits and costs not fully accounted for?

BioOil, the quest, is the result of fast pyrolosis and the distilate fraction that results from creating charcoal of essentially any wasted biomass, corn stover and waste wood products.  The process, fast pyrolosis, creates three prized products: BioOil, BioChar, and BioGas. BioOil can be mixed with traditional petrolium products as an extender. BioChar is the hard flinty carbon that is returned to the contributor's fields sequestered with all sorts of great agonomic effects (maybe?). And BioGas fuels the charcoalization process... neat trick!  A group named 25x25 is a political group claiming that in 2025 products like BioOil will contribute upto 25 percent of the nation's oil requirements?  And that is a lot.

But I have slipped off of my topic.  Through Lon's BioChar alert it set me tracing though some of the links in favor of BioChar, I rediscovered Glomalin or the essential goodness found within all healthy soils.  It is the result of fungal decompositon of all of the trash or material other than grain.  It is suggested it is the magic glue of productive soils. There is some speculation that BioChar represents some sort of form of Glomalin which I feel is a distortion. But you never really know until the research comes in.  Read on - Glomalin... nature's essential goodness

Glomalin: The Real Soil Builder

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2003/030205.htm 

By Don Comis

February 5, 2003

An Agricultural Research Service scientist now has more proof that she has found a key ingredient responsible for the well-known benefits of soil organic matter.

Sara F. Wright, a soil scientist with the ARS Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., discovered glomalin in 1996 and named the substance after Glomales, the taxonomic order of the fungi that produce the sticky protein. Recently, she used a nuclear magnetic resonance imager to show that glomalin is structurally different from any other organic matter component, proving it is a distinct entity.

The fungi live on most plant roots and use the plants' carbon to produce glomalin. Glomalin is thought to seal and solidify the outside of the fungi's pipelike filaments that transport water and nutrients to plants.

As the roots grow, glomalin sloughs off into the soil where it acts as a "super glue," helping sand, silt and clay particles stick to each other and to the organic matter that brings soil to life. It is glomalin that helps give good soil its feel, as smooth clumps of the glued-together particles and organic matter flow through an experienced gardener's or farmer's hands.

Glomalin was long lost in humus, the organic matter that is often called "black gold." When it did turn up in humus measurements, it was thought to be a contaminant.

Glomalin is not just the glue that holds humus to soil particles, it actually does much of what humus has been credited with. Because there is so much more glomalin in the soil than humic acid, an extractable fraction of humus, glomalin stores 27 percent of total soil carbon, compared to humic acid's eight percent. It also provides nitrogen to soil and gives it the structure needed to hold water and for proper aeration, movement of plant roots and stability to resist erosion.