drought, high and low tempratures are the most important abiotic stresses in chickpea cultivation. improving plant root characteristics (root length and root volume) is one of the ways to increase drought tolerance in chickpea. mycorrhizal symbiosis increases drought resistance of host plants through different mechanisms. to study the effects of water stress and mycorrhizal fungi inoculation on...

Gaeumannomyces graminis var. tritici causes take-all disease, the most important root disease of cereal plants. Cereal plants are able to form a symbiotic association with soil-borne arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi which can provide bioprotection against soil-borne fungal pathogens. However, the bioprotective effect of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi against soil-borne fungal pathogens might vary. In...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are obligate symbionts with most terrestrial plants. They improve plant nutrition, particularly phosphate acquisition, and thus are able to improve plant growth. In exchange, the fungi obtain photosynthetically fixed carbon. AMF are coenocytic, meaning that many nuclei coexist in a common cytoplasm. Genetic exchange recently has been demonstrated in the AMF Gl...

Ectomycorrhizal symbiosis is omnipresent in boreal forests, where it is assumed to benefit plant growth. However, experiments show inconsistent benefits for plants and volatility of individual partnerships, which calls for a re-evaluation of the presumed role of this symbiosis. We reconcile these inconsistencies by developing a model that demonstrates how mycorrhizal networking and market mecha...

Soil microbes have great potential for agriculture. A wide variety of microbes have been utilized to enhance crop production. In the current issue, enhanced growth of rice plants is reported with the inoculation of a nitrogen (N)-fixing bacterium, Azospirillum sp. B510 (2), which possesses a disease-suppressive property against the rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae) and the bacterial leaf b...

Recommendation, as we use the word here, means advice from a soil or crop specialist to those deciding how much of, what form of, and when to apply a fertilizer to a soil to benefit growth of a plant or crop. Recommendations of fertilizers and soil amendments must consider the interactions of all the factors discussed in this manual, including the soil, the crop, the climate, the beneficial eff...

1. In the conventional view of soil carbon (C) cycling, mycorrhizal fungi are primarily considered vectors for plant C input to soils. However, there is accumulating evidence that mycorrhizal fungi may also contribute to the direct loss of soil C by acting as decomposers, that is by producing extracellular lytic enzymes and metabolizing soil C. 2. Most of the evidence that mycorrhizal fungi can...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are ubiquitous in the rhizosphere and form symbiotic relationships with most terrestrial plant roots. In this study, four strains of Rhizophagus clarus were cultured and variations in their growth characteristics owing to functional diversity and resultant effects on host plant were investigated. Growth characteristics of the studied R. clarus strains varied s...