An unanticipated benefit to blogging for me comes from examining access logs for search strings used by others to find the Crumb Trail. Some are humorous or salacious but others are useful. I sometimes google interesting strings myself. Today I googled "glomalin methods". Crumb Trail was 40 or so links down the list so whoever did the search worked to find it. At the top of the list was a USDA page devoted to sharing techniques for measuring glomalin.

The following methods may be used to examine glomalin, an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal protein, which is ubiquitous in the soil and has been found coating fungal hyphae and soil aggregates. Because of its importance in forming water-stable aggregates and in soil fertility, concentrations of this protein are being measured in a variety of soils to compare soils of different compositions and/or tillage or disruption practices. Please refer to the listed references for further details concerning the methodology and results.

There was also a link to a glomalin information page

Soil aggregation is a complex process that is largely dependent upon microorganisms to provide glues that hold soil particles together. These glues are carbon-containing compounds that protect microorganisms from drying out. We are beginning to understand the importance of one group of soil fungi and the glue that is produced in large amounts by these fungi. The fungi are the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and the glue was named glomalin after Glomales — the taxonomic order of this group of fungi.

...

Glomalin concentration and aggregate stability are related over 3 years during conversion from conventional tillage (P-T) to no tillage (N-T) corn (Fig. 3). A comparison was made with a perennial grass that grew undisturbed for 15 years as a buffer around the plots. Increases in both stability and glomalin were seen at yearly intervals, but had not reached the levels in the undisturbed grass. Higher levels of glomalin give greater water infiltration, more permeability to air, better root development, higher microbial activity, resistance to surface sealing (crusts) and erosion (wind/water).

Marvelous stuff. If we stop plowing fields will be more fertile with more organic matter, retain moisture as well as drain well and make better use of phosphorous and so need less fertilizers. Soil life will increase and plants will thrive.

Croplands will never be as healthy as grasslands but we can do much better. It is worth noting that soils get better year after year when left untilled as glomalin increases. It might be interesting to attempt to quantify the amount of carbon that can be sequestered this way since glomalin is so durable, accumulating year after year rather than cycling back to the atmosphere.