A company has received funding to develop a fungal pellet which is helping reforestation by ensuring more young trees survive.

Up to a third of newly-planted trees fail to take root and die within three years and Rhizocore Technologies, based in Edinburgh, believes its simple pellet may be the solution.

It is now conducting trials and plans to scale up operations after ReGen Ventures, Collaborative Fund and Grok Ventures provided £3.5m to support its plans.

In 2019, the UK government set a target to plant 30,000 hectares of trees per year across the UK by 2025 and the Woodland Trust aims to plant 50 million trees in the UK by the middle of the decade.

CEO Toby Parkes, who co-founded Rhizocore Technologies in 2021 with chief mycologist David Satori, said: “To receive such global backing really is a validation of our product’s potential to restore ecosystems around the world – but it’s also a recognition of the transformative power that fungi hold, as the crucial foundation of the planet’s ecosystems.

“This is a radical approach to tackle climate change that we’re developing at Rhizocore, and with the support from our investors, we will be able to sequester gigatons of carbon to protect the future of the Earth for generations to come.”