Selection of Infective Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal Isolates for Field Inoculation

Submitted: 16 September 2010
Accepted: 16 September 2010
Published: 16 September 2010
Abstract Views: 7806
PDF: 806
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Authors

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi play a key role in host plant growth and health, nutrient and water uptake, plant community diversity and dynamics. AM fungi differ in their symbiotic performance, which is the result of the interaction of two fungal characters, infectivity and efficiency. Infectivity is the ability of a fungal isolate to establish rapidly an extensive mycorrhizal symbiosis and is correlated with pre-symbiotic steps of fungal life cycle, such as spore germination and hyphal growth. Here, different AM fungal isolates were tested, with the aim of selecting infective endophytes for field inoculation. Greenhouse and microcosm experiments were performed in order to assess the ability of 12 AM fungal isolates to produce spores, colonize host roots and to perform initial steps of symbiosis establishment, such as spore germination and hyphal growth. AM fungal spore production and root colonization were significantly different among AM fungal isolates. Spore and sporocarp densities ranged from 0.8 to 7.4 and from 0.6 to 2.0 per gram of soil, respectively, whereas root colonization ranged from 2.9 to 72.2%. Percentage of spore or sporocarp germination ranged from 5.8 to 53.3% and hyphal length from 4.7 to 79.8 mm. The ordination analysis (Redundancy Analysis, RDA) showed that environmental factors explained about 60% of the whole variance and their effect on fungal infectivity variables was significant (P = 0.002). The biplot clearly showed that variables which might be used to detect infective AM fungal isolates were hyphal length and root colonization. Such analysis may allow the detection of the best parameters to select efficient AM fungal isolates to be used in agriculture.

Dimensions

Altmetric

PlumX Metrics

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Citations

How to Cite

Pellegrino, E., Kamatchi Ramasamy, C., Sbrana, C., Barberi, P., & Giovannetti, M. (2010). Selection of Infective Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal Isolates for Field Inoculation. Italian Journal of Agronomy, 5(3), 225–232. https://doi.org/10.4081/ija.2010.225